HE ROOTS OF CHRISTIAN 
EAGHING AS FOUND !N 
HE OLDTESTAMENToi 






^wSPP 



EORGE AARON BARTON 




Copightl^^. 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



The Roots of Christian 
Teaching as Found in 
the Old Testament /. 



-BY- 



GEORGE AARON BARTON, A.M., Ph.D., 

Associate Professor of Biblical Literature and Semitic 
Languages in Bryn Mawr College. 



\> 3 2 ^' J ^ 1 J 






1902 
THE JOHN C. WINSTON CO. 

PHILADELPHIA 



rt.^ 



THE LJBftARY •F 

••NGRESS, 
Two Copies Receive* 

MAY. 1 1902 



3lJ^8 ^ XXa N*. 
COPY 8. 



COPYRIGHT 1902 

BY 

GEOFiGE: A. BARTON. 



TO 

MY WIFE 

DEVOTED HELPER 

LOVING AND INSPIRING 

COMRADE 



THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK. 



This little volume has been written for 
those who would study the Old Testament 
devotionally. Many are puzzled to know 
how to use the Old Testament. They have 
an idea that modern knowledge and mod- 
ern methods of study have wrought great 
changes in our conception of that part of 
our Bible, but just what these changes are 
they often do not know, and when they do 
know, often experience a vague sense of help- 
lessness with reference to the use to which 
the Old Testament may be put. 

Our forefathers found Christ in the Old 
Testament by a system of typology. The 
system was often fanciful and arbitrary, 
but it pointed in the direction of the right 
method. The roots of Christian teaching 
go down into Hebrew and Semitic soil, 
and to understand the whole tree, one must 
study the roots. Then, too, there is a real 
typology. Just as the biologist beholds in 
the skeleton of a fish of the far-off Devonian 

vii 



Vlll THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK 

age the type of a man, because it is the 
antecedent of the human skeleton, so the 
student of scripture may find in Hebrew 
and Semitic institutions real types of Chris- 
tian truth. He finds the beginning of the 
form of that earthly body which afterward 
became the tabernacle of the Christian Spirit, 
and is helped to understand the expression 
of the Spirit better, because he understands 
the history of its instrument of expression. 
The study of Old Testament institutions 
and ideas is therefore often a great devo- 
tional help. 

Many narratives of the Old Testament 
are powerful parables of Christian truth. 
Although differences of opinion now exist as 
to the historical character of some of these 
accounts, the significance of the narratives 
as vehicles for the expression of religious 
truth is in no way affected by such opin- 
ions. Like the parables of Christ, they 
are classic utterances of religious truth quite 
apart from historical considerations. The 
reader will therefore find in the following 
pages brief sketches of Old Testament ideas 
and institutions, mingled with character- 



THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK ix 

studies of a number of Old Testament 
heroes. In each case the Christian truth, 
of which the sketch presents a type or para- 
ble, is briefly set forth in such a way that a 
reader may enjoy its religious significance, 
whether he is accustomed to look at the 
Bible from the old point of view or from 
the new. It has been the writer's aim to 
fasten the mind on those things '^ which 
cannot be shaken.'' 

While parts of the brief chapters are some- 
times devoted to historical sketches, their 
chief aim is devotional. The writer would 
take the reader apart for brief meditations 
upon the great themes of Christian truth, 
Christian character, and Christian duty as 
these are foreshadow^ed in the Old Testa- 
ment revelation. The meditations have 
been made short with the hope that they 
might thus be of service to busy men and 
women. 




ASSYRIAN SACRED 
TREE. 



CONTENTS. 



The Purpose 

I. 

II. 

III. 

IV. 

V. 

VI. 

VII. 

VIII. 

IX. 

X. 

XI. 

XII. 

XIII. 

XIV. 

XV. 

XVI. 

XVII. 

XVIII. 

XIX. 

XX. 

XXI. 

XXII. 

XXIII. 

XXIV. 

XXV. 



PAGE. 

of this Book V 

The Unity of God 1 

The Nature of God 5 

The Moral Natui-e of God 10 

The Essential Nature of God ... 15 

God Manifest in the Flesh . . , . 20 

Christ the Revelation of God ... 25 

Christ, the Messiah 30 

Christ, the Captain of Salvation . 35 

The Holy Spirit 40 

Man 45 

Sin as Transgression 49 

Sin as Separation from God .... 54 
The Sacrificial Element in Atone- 
ment 58 

The Function of Suffering in Atone- 
ment 63 

The Temple of the Heart 71 

Priesthood 78 

The Inventions of the Sons of Cain. 83 

Enoch 88 

Sons of God 93 

Noah 98 

Babel 103 

The Call of Abraham 107 

Jacob at Bethel 112 

How Jacob Became Israel .... 117 

Joseph 122 

xi 



Xll 



CONTENTS 



XXVI. Moses 126 

XXVII. The Passage of the Red Sea ... . 130 

XXVIII. Joshua 134 

XXIX. Deborah 138 

XXX. Gideon 142 

XXXI. Samson 146 

XXXII. Samuel 149 

XXXIII. Saul 152 

XXXIV. Jonathan 166 

XXXV. David 159 

XXXVI. Solomon 163 

XXXVII. Ehjah 167 

XXXVIII. Amos .171 

XXXIX. Hosea .176 

XL. Isaiah 180 

XLI. Immanuel 185 

XLII. The Prince of the Four Names . . 190 

XLIII. Josiah's Reform 195 

XLIV. Jeremiah 200 

XLV. Habakkuk 205 

XLVI. Job 209 

XLVII. Ezekiel 213 

XLVIII. The Great Unknown 218 

XLIX. Nehemiah 223 

L. The Levitical Ritual 227 

LI. Jonah 232 

LII. The Psalter 236 

LIII. Satan 241 

LIV. International Peace 246 

LV. The Coming of the Kingdom ... 255 

. LVI. The City of God 262 

LVII. How Christ Fulfilled the Law and 

the Prophets 267 



THE ROOTS 

— OF- 

CHRISTIAN TEACHING 

AS FOUND IN THE 

OLD TESTAMENT 



CHAPTER I. 
THE UNITY OF GOD. 

" Thou believest that there is one God," James, ii, 19. 

" That God, which ever hves and loves, 
One God, one law, one element ; 
And one far-off divine event, 

To which the whole creation moves." 

— Tennyson. 

The germ of the oak as it pushes its way 
up through the clod does not closely re- 
semble the gigantic tree which in later 
years it will become, and yet a naturalist 
who has watched the growth of oaks finds 
in the germ the promise and potency of the 
full grown tree. Something like this is true 
of the idea of God. The human mind in 
its childhood could not grasp the sublime 
thought that in all this complex world there 
is but one God, and yet in his childish and 
crude way primitive man unconsciously 
gave expression to the great principle of the 
divine unity. Not that primitive man was 
monotheistic, — -for that can no longer be 
maintained, — nor can we longer think with 
Renan that the Semitic people even had a 

1 



2 THE UNITY OB^ GOD 

genius for monotheism. The study of com- 
parative religion has rendered both these 
views untenable. But primitive men, both 
Semites and others, were henotheists — they 
believed in one god only for their tribe. 
That god was its spiritual chief, its father, 
its cherisher, its defender. While the god 
w^as mainly thought to be interested in the 
tribe as a whole, each individual as an atom 
of the tribal unity shared in the god's interest 
and life. This tribe was the individual's 
little world. Within it life, liberty and the 
pursuit of happiness were assured him ; out- 
side of it he had no rights and, if he found 
life at all, it was the agonizing existence of 
a slave. 

Within the little world of primitive man, 
then, one god ruled ; under him all tribes- 
men were brothers, for in some rude sense 
one god was their father. Monotheism has 
but enlarged this conception and applied it 
to the world. We now see that one God is 
the father of all men, and that all men are 
brethren. The primitive tribe is expanded 
and has become coextensive with the human 
race ; its home is no longer some oasis in the 



THE UNITY OF GOD 6 

Arabian desert, some mountain fastness in 
India, some marsh in Babylonia, or some 
island in the sea, but the whole round world 
with all its variety of sea and land, frigid 
poles and luxuriant tropics, bleak mountain 
and fertile dale, all illuminated with sun, 
moon and myriads of stars. Its deity is no 
longer thought to be limited in power and 
activity to some insignificant corner of a 
small land, but is seen to rule the universe 
as far as the most powerful telescope can 
carry human vision or imagination wing 
the thought of man. The ancient unity 
of the tribe has become the unity of the 
universe. 

The history of this expansion is the his- 
tory of human progress and civilization. It 
has come through conquest, syncretism, 
polytheism ; through sacrifice, devotion, 
deep thought, errors and revelation. Israel, 
at first a group of henotheistic tribes, was 
given before all others the practical concep- 
tion of the unity of God and of the world, 
and began the work of teaching the great 
truth to others. The conceptions of Israel 
were completed by Jesus Christ, whose 



4 THE UNITY OF GOD 

followers are still engaged in the work of 
making all men realize that " God is one " 
and that He " hath made of one blood all 
nations of men." 

Looking backward as we now can, it 
becomes apparent that the primitive tribal 
conception of God contained in germ these 
sublime conceptions. It was a type of the 
Christian conception of God, our Father, 
the ruler of the universe, " in whom we live 
and move and have our being."* 



*For the details of this tribal idea of God, see W. R. Smith's 
Religion of the Semites, Lecture II. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE NATURE OF GOD. 

" God is Spirit. ' ' John, iv, 24. 

" Yea! In Thy life our little lives are ended, 
Into Thy depths our trembling spirits fall ; 

In Thee enfolded, gathered, comprehended, 
As holds the sea her waves — ^Thou hold'st us all." 

— E. Scudder. 

Next to the conception of the unity of 
God comes the conception of His spirituality. 
We are accustomed to think of this as one 
of the great facts about God which we owe 
to Jesus Christ, and He did set it before the 
eyes of men in a new perspective. The 
thought of the older time had, however, 
given some premonition of this lofty con- 
ception. It did not burst on the world full 
fledged at once, but appeared first in germ, 
then in a blade, and at last in the teaching 
of Christ in its full flower. 

The early germ of this thought is found 
in those childish conceptions of deity, pos- 
sessed by nearly all primitive peoples, who 
believe their god to be the genius, or spirit 
of a spring, a tree, a rock or other natural 

5 



b THE NATURE OF GOD 

object. To us, who are far removed from 
them in time and in culture, these conceptions 
seem childish and even gross, but the sym- 
pathetic observer must perceive that, after 
all, this primitive point of view referred the 
life manifested in the tree, or in the vegeta- 
tion which the spring made possible, to 
spiritual sources, and was the beginning of 
the recognition of the spirituality of God. 
When, a little later, it was thought that 
these divine spirits could be persuaded to 
come and live in objects of the worshipper's 
selection or even of his manufacture, a great 
step forward was taken in the recognition 
of the spirituality of God. It is character- 
istic of spirit to be free, mobile and inspir- 
ing. If the god could at will go to live in 
an idol, he had shaken off the limitations 
of environment, exercised the power to 
change his abode, and thus proven himself 
to be possessed of the powers of spiritual 
freedom such as the worshipper was con- 
scious that he possessed himself. These be- 
ginnings of the recognition that God is spirit 
can be traced among the Hebrews and their 
ancestors as well as among other peoples. 



THE NATURE OF GOD 7 

These ideas in the earliest stages of reli- 
gious thought proved helpful to those who 
entertained them. They are on a par with 
the intelligence of their possessors in other 
matters, and proved not only innocent but 
inspiring. As intelligence increased these 
conceptions, perpetuated by that conserva- 
tism which always attaches to the sacred 
beliefs and practices of religion, became 
grossly superstitious. They were often 
united with ritual, which though once inno- 
cent, had become immoral. In order to 
eradicate these debasing ideas and practices, 
the Hebrews at an early time prohibited the 
use of images of Jehovah, and when the law 
of Deuteronomy was adopted as the funda- 
mental religious law of the commonwealth, 
all the old sanctuaries except the one at Jeru- 
salem, were abolished. This was in its turn 
a great step forward. It had come as the 
result of long years of prophetic teaching 
and cost before it was completed much pro- 
phetic effort, but it was a great accomplish- 
ment to get the popular practice shaped in 
accord with its principles. Most people 
were too far from the sanctuary to visit it 



8 THE NATUBE OF GOD 

often ; their prayers had to be made directly 
to the Great Spirit without even the help of 
a sanctuary, so that more than of old they 
realized the spirituality of God. 

After the exile came the unfortunate 
quarrel with the Samaritans and the erection 
of the temple on Mount Gerezim. While 
Jev/s and Samaritans alike believed that 
God could be approached in prayer by a 
believer whenever in need, they nevertheless 
both thought that in their own temple He 
could be approached better than anywhere 
else ; and, indeed, that if one did not at 
times approach Him in His temple His 
favor could not be expected in the same 
degree as might be hoped, if God were duly 
worshipped in His chosen courts. It was at 
this juncture in religious thought that the 
Christ disclosed the great truth in all its 
beauty, stripped of all concealing husk, 
" God is Spirit ;'' '' neither in this mountain 
(Gerezim) nor yet at Jerusalem shall ye 
worship the Father.'' Thus the great fact 
toward which men had for centuries been 
groping, shone out in all its brilliancy. 
God is Spirit; no lengthy pilgrimage to 



THE NATURE OF GOD 9 

Jerusalem, to Rome, or to Mecca is longer 
necessary to find God, or to come into His 
presence. Man is spirit ; he can find God 
only in the recesses of his own heart. 

"Spirit with spirit can meet." 
The sailor on the sea, the farmer at his toil, 
the mother by the cradle of her child, the 
miner who quarries in the heart of the 
earth, the hermit in his cell, or the busy 
man of affairs in the world's most crowded 
mart, — all may come at all times into most 
direct touch w^ith the great God. '' If I 
ascend into heaven, thou art there. If I 
make my bed in hell, behold thou art there.' ^ 



CHAPTER III. 

THE MORAL NATURE OF GOD. 

"•God is Light; and in Him is no darkness at all." 
— 1 John, i, 5. 

" God's in His heaven, 
All's right with the world." 

— Browning, 

We may regard it as a general rule that 
a people's god is the embodiment of its 
liighest ethical ideal. This statement is, 
broadly speaking, true, though there are 
apparent exceptions to it. These excep- 
tions are easily accounted for. 

In the most primitive circles of human 
society an idea of god is formed which 
expresses the loftiest conceptions of which 
such a people are capable. In order to 
give these thoughts of God reality in the 
minds of His worshippers, they are embod- 
ied in stories of His goodness as good- 
ness is then conceived. In the lapse of 
time the ethical standard of such a circle 
advances ; its morals become less savage, 
its ideals more human. The old myths, or 
10 



THE MORAL NATURE OF GOD 11 

tales, or histories, in which the former con- 
ception of the divine is embalmed like some 
fly in the amber of the Baltic, remain, and 
for a time the anomaly is presented of a 
people whose morals are better than those 
of their god are supposed to be. But this 
condition is not enduring, and soon corrects 
itself. Such a people soon shapes its tales 
of the past so that they reflect its new 
standards of life ; or if this is not possible, 
as when these conceptions have crystallized 
into an Iliad or an Old Testament, then 
new ways of interpreting the old narratives 
are found, so that they shall reflect the 
new image. 

The antithesis between the God of the Old 
Testament and the God of the New was felt 
in the early days of Christianity. Marcion 
went so far as to declare that the two could 
not be the same. In one sense Marcion was 
right, but in another he was greatly mis- 
taken. When we contrast the Jehovah, 
who brought bears out of the wood to 
devour little children, with the Father of 
Him who said, '^ Suffer little children, and 
forbid them not, to come unto me; for to 



12 THE MORAL NATURE OF GOD 

such belongeth the kingdom of heaven," 
we are contrasting the knowledge of God 
possessed by children in religion with the 
knowledge of One more than man. The 
children pictured their God as best they 
could. They were not very wise ; their 
passions were very strong ; like all their 
kind they thought of Jehovah as One like 
themselves, only greater and more power- 
ful. Christ the spiritual Man, — the Son of 
God, — came to help us to put away childish 
things in our thought of the Father. We 
do wrong to let the childish idea of God's 
nature supplant in our minds that taught 
by Christ, but we also do wrong to deny our 
sympathy and respect to the children whose 
best thought seems to us (thanks to the 
Master) so imperfect. 

And yet in the Old Testament there is 
many a germ or type of the spotless moral 
conception of God which is voiced in the 
words : ^' God is light ". In one of these 
passages in the Old Testament which repre- 
sents God most thoroughly as a man, — a 
passage in which a man talks with Him, 
and persuades Him to be merciful, — we 



THE MORAL NATURE OF GOD 13 

come upon the exclamation : " Shall not 
the Judge of all the earth do right ? " 
Deeper than men's traditions of God, more 
profound than cheir creeds which have the 
sanction of age, is the conviction that God 
is just, that He is good, that on Him the 
soul, buffeted and distressed by the storms 
of circumstance, may rely for the realiza- 
tion of its rights at last. This thought, 
cropping out as it does here and there in the 
Old Testament, is a germ of the Christian 
conception of God. 

The epistle of John was written to some 
who doubted the divine goodness. They 
feared there might be some darkness in the 
nature of God. Who has not at times 
shared this fear ? The shadows on the Old 
Testament picture of Jehovah, nature " red 
in tooth and claw," or the dark annals of 
the human heart have led us to question 
whether God can be really good. The 
Christian message not only assures us that 

** Nothing can be good in Him 
Which evil is in me ", 

but that " God is light, and in Him is no 

darkness at all." 



14 THE MORAL NATURE OF GOD 

It is only they who have gained this 
vision of God who can be really optimistic. 
One must be able to look at the spiritual, 
rather than the material values of life — able 
to see that there is in control of the universe 
one God, and He the soul of justice — able to 
discern the man within the man for whom 
the Father is working out an exceeding 
weight of glory, before he can sing : 

** To one fixed stake my spirit clings ; 
I know that God is good ". 

" God's in His heaven 
All's right with the world." 



CHAPTER IV. 
THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF GOD. 

" God is love." I. John, iv, 8, 16. 

** Immortal love, forever full, 

Forever flowing free, 
Forever shared, forever whole, 

A never-ebbing sea." 

— Whittier. 

The simple sentence, '' God is love/' con- 
tains the profoundest thought concerning 
God of which the human mind is capable. 
The divine unity, the divine spirituality, 
and the divine justice are all fundamental 
truths; but God might be one, He might 
be recognized as the great spiritual Soul of 
the universe, and as the embodiment of 
absolute justice, and still seem to His crea- 
tures a cold, unfeeling self-centered being. 
This one declaration, " God is love," pierces 
to the depths of His nature like a shaft of 
light, and lays bare to us as the controlling 
element of the divine nature a Heart palpitat- 
ing with tender, strong, and unselfish love. 

This supreme conception of God did not 
drop from heaven all at once. It is not 
15 



16 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF GOD 

without its foreshadowing type in the old 
Hebrew and early Semitic conception of 
God. The primitive Semitic conception of 
the supreme deity pictured her as a mother 
who was the life giver, and who manifested 
herself especially in the processes of pro- 
duction and reproduction in vegetable and 
animal life. She was thought to be most 
pleasingly served by men when they made 
themselves her agents in those acts of 
physical love from which new life springs. 
This idea of deity led them to institute 
gross services for the goddess, which, 
though innocent at first, became in process 
of time sources of social corruption and 
degradation. It is these services as they 
existed in Canaan which are vaguely hinted 
at in the Old Testament, and which form 
such a dark background to Hebrew social 
life. 

Nevertheless, it was in this gross concep- 
tion of deity that the germ of the great 
truth that " God is love/' began to appear. 
Men were taught that the services of love are 
divine. We now know that through mother- 
hood and fatherhood, the prolongation 



THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF GOD 17 

of infancy in the human race, and the 
consequent necessity to struggle for the life 
of others, man has been led to become in 
some sense a social being, caring for the 
things of the spirit, and striving for unself- 
ish ends. It was through these same 
physical channels that the germ of the 
thought that '^ God is love " first came to 
that race which has become the great reli- 
gious teacher of the world.* 

Imperfect as this germ, was at first, it was 
a type of the perfect flower. The crude con- 
ceptions of physical love and all the gross 
practices to which it gave rise were gradually 
sloughed off. Hosea, the great prophet of 
the love of God, gave to the whole concep- 
tion a tender, lofty and spiritual turn, pic- 
turing God as a faithful Husband, who, 
though wronged by His unfaithful spouse, 
lovingly follows her and seeks by all pos- 
sible means to restore her to a life worthy of 
His love. At times he changes the meta- 
phor, and God becomes to Hosea's thought 
a loving Father following pr-»digal Ephraim 



*For further fact?, concerning this see the writer's Sketch of Sem- 
itic Origins, Social and Religicus, chs. ili. and vii. 



18 THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF GOD 

and seeking to guide his wayward steps. 
This thought of Hosea was echoed by sub- 
sequent prophets, but it never found full 
recognition, nor indeed adequate spiritual 
expression till it was transfigured and glori- 
fied in the teaching and work of Jesus 
Christ; and then it waited till the end of 
the first century for a writer to crystallize 
it into this gem of a religious definition. 

This conception of God which thus 
struggled for expression through the gross 
ritual of primitive times, through the pangs 
of prophetic travail, and the sorrows of the 
Son of Man, is the final conception of God. 
Man must have some new faculties before 
he can form a higher conception of his 
Creator and Father. If God be love, through 
all the ages He has been living the unselfish 
life of love ; He has been giving Himself. 
He is not the self-centered being, which we 
have pictured Him, sitting apart like some 
absolute monarch, and so shaping the 
course of human events that either the 
homage of worshippers, or the wails of the 
rebellious, should contribute to His selfish 
glory. Not so is His glory to be pictured. 



THE ESSENTIAL NATURE OF GOD 19 

His is the glory, not of possession only, but 
of impartation ; not of having, but of giving ; 
not simply of being, but of helping others to 
be. In a Vvord, His glory is His goodness ; 
" God is love.'^ 

Great as are the truths, '' God is one," 
" God is Spirit," and " God is light," they 
are all crowned and glorified by the sublim- 
est truth concerning Him, " God is love." 



CHAPTER V. 
GOD MANIFEST IN THE FLESH. 

" We all with unveiled face see as if reflected in a 
mirror the the glory of the Lord." 2 Cor., iii, 18. 

*' Deep strike thy roots, O heavenly Vine, 
Within our earthly sod, 
Most human and yet most divine, 
The flower of man and God ! " 

— Whittier. 

The conception that God has manifested 
Himself in human form, or in a human life, 
has been found among many peoples. It 
also existed among the early Hebrews as the 
Old Testament witnesses. In the earliest 
document, or collection of narratives, which 
the Bible contains there are several expres- 
sions of this conception. Thus, in Genesis 
xvi, Hagar was met by the angel of Jehovah 
who talked with her, giving her reassuring 
promises, and when he had gone she believed 
that Jehovah had been talking with her. 
In the eighteenth chapter of the same book, 
three men came to Abraham's tent and 
were entertained, and the traditions of after 
days asserted that one of them turned out 
20 



GOD MANIFEST IN THE FLESH 21 

to be Jehovah Himself. Again, in the sixth 
of Judges, an angel of Jehovah appeared to 
Gideon, who seems in the sequel to have 
been Jehovah Himself. 

All these instances indicate that back of 
these narratives there lay a time when it 
was thought that God manifested Himself 
to individuals upon important occasions in 
human form. A little later this view was 
superseded by the conception that He sent 
his angel or messenger upon such occasions 
to carry his messages. When the narratives 
were written, to which reference has been 
made, Israelitish thought hovered on the 
borderland between the two. An angel 
might come, but he might in the end turn 
out to be God Himself. 

Another conception similar to these, and 
which either grew out of them or sprang 
from the same root, is the thought that God 
might impart to an angel His face or His 
presence (in Hebrew the two are expressed 
by the same term), and thus manifest Him- 
self to men. At least, such is the thought 
expressed by the Hebrew text of Isaiah. (The 
earliest translation, the Greek, has a different 



22 GOD MANIFEST IN THE FLESH 

idea of it). In the thirty-third of Exodus 
we are told that Moses prayed that the 
presence of God should go with him and 
the people along the untrodden path, upon 
which they were about to enter, and that 
he received the promise : '' My presence 
shall go with thee." The prophet, in speak- 
ing of it, in poetic strain, says : *' In all 
their afflictions He was afflicted, and the 
angel of His presence moved them." ^ 

That God could come thus into human 
form, or impart His presence in an angel, 
was a type of the Christian's conception of 
the manifestation of God in Christ. Like 
all types it appears in a crude form when 
compared to the great truth of which it 
was the rudimentary expression, but it help- 
fully embodied for a time the great truth 
that divinity comes into our humanity. 

Kindred to the thoughts we have been 
pairsuing is the conception that God could 
impart His name to an angel. The divine 
name was considered the embodiment of all 
the divine attributes ; it was so holy that 
when it was blasphemed, he who had thus 

• Isaiah Ixiii. 9. 



GOD MANIFEST IN THE FLESH 23 

transgressed was executed as a criminal 
(Lev. xxiv, 11). Notwithstanding this, we 
are told (Ex. xxiii, 21), that God declared 
His name to be in an angel. It is a similar 
thought which Paul takes up in the epistle 
to the Phillippians, when he declares, in 
speaking of Christ : ** Wherefore also God 
highly exalted Him, and gave him the name 
which is above every name.'^ 

These early Hebrew thoughts of the way 
God manifested Himself to men receive 
more than their fulfilment in Christ. In 
Him we have not a transient manifestation 
of the presence of God, but the permanent 
union of the divine nature with a human 
nature ; not a mechanical impartation of a 
few divine qualities, but the indwelling of 
God in a human body and a human psycho- 
logical organism. Such an indwelling was 
not to conceal the glory of the Father, but 
to reveal it so that men could understand 
it. God in Christ is seen not to be a cosmic 
vastness without a heart to care for the 
creatures which people the world ; but a 
God of love, whom we, beholding in Christ 
as in a mirror, shall, by the transforming 



24 GOD MANIFEST IN THE FLESH 

power of the sight, come to resemble. " The 
incarnation was the eternal become tem- 
poral for a little time, that we might look 
at it/' ^ 



* Henry Drummond, The Ideal Life. p. 147. 



CHAPTER VI. 

CHRIST, THE REVELATION OF GOD. 

"In the beginning was the Word." John i, 1. 
** Christ the power of God and the wisdom of 
God." 1 Cor. i, 24. 

"■ We faintly hear, we dimly see, 
In differing phrase we pray ; 
But dim or clear, we own in thee 
The Light, the Truth, the Way." 

— Whittier. 

Other half-blind, half-luminous premoni- 
tions, of what the writers of the New Testa- 
ment saw in Christ are found in the person- 
ifications of '^ wisdom " and '' word "in cer- 
tain parts of the Old Testament and in other 
pre-Christian Jewish writings. 

Israelitish writers frequently personify the 
spoken word of God, which, in the first 
chapter of Genesis, is said to have been so 
potent in the creation of the world. God's 
word, said Jeremiah, is like a fire and like a 
hammer which breaks the rock.^ Another 
prophet conceived the divine word as capa- 
ble of being sent on a mission, which it 



iJer, xxiii, 29, 

25 



26 CHRIST, THE REVELATION OF GOD 

would not return without accomplishing.^ 
Similarly a psalmist thought the word of 
God could be sent on a mission of heal- 
ing.^ " By the word of the Lord were the 
heavens made," sang another, ^ while a later 
writer exclaimed, '' God, who hast made 
all things by thy word.^'* This latter writer 
represents the divine word as leaping down 
from heaven like a man of war into the 
midst of the Egyptians for their destruc- 
tion,^ thus making a very strong personifi- 
cation of the word of God. 

Among the Greeks the term " word " had 
also been used for some five hundred years 
to denote a manifestation of God. It was 
first used by Heraclitus, and had been used 
by many philosophers after him. In the 
Gospel of John these two ways of describing 
the self-revealing power of God, the one 
Hebrew in its origin, and the other Greek, 
meet and unite, and the mind of the evan- 
gelist finds in Christ their full realization, 
and in them types of Him. *' God,'' says 
another writer, '' having spoken unto the 



^Isa. Iv, 11. *Ps. cvii, 20. aps.xxxiii, 6. * Wisdom of Solo- 
mon ix, 1. ^Wisdom of Solomon xviii, 14. 



CHRIST, THE BBVELATION OF GOD 27 

fathers in the prophets by divers portions 

and in divers manners, hath at the end of 

these days spoken unto us in His Son."^ 

God had been speaking to men from the 

beginning ; gradually they had perceived 

that the whole universe was an expression 

of His will, — that it was formed by His 

word, — that His word accomplished all 

things. After the Christ had come they 

saw that God's Word — the clearest expression 

of His thoughts and purposes for men — 

had actually been living in their midst. 

*^The Word became flesh and tabernacled 

among us." 

Somewhat similar is the way in which 

the word, ^' wisdom ^' became a type of 

Christ. In Job the preciousness and mys- 

teriousness of wisdom is charmingly set 

forth f as it also is in the third chapter of 

Proverbs. The climax is reached, however, 

in the eighth chapter of the same book 

where wisdom is made to declare in poetic 

strain : 

** When He established the heavens, I was there : 
When He set a circle upon the face of the deep, 



ifieb. 1, 1-2. «Job xxTiii. 



28 CHRIST, THE REVELATION OF GOD 

When He made firm the skies above, 

* * * -H- * * 

"Then I was by Him as a master workman ; 
And I was daily His deUght, 
Rejoicing always before Him, 
Rejoicing in His habitable earth. "^ 

In the AYisdom of Solomon the same strain 
is continued. In the seventh and eighth 
chapters the author's fervid enthusiasm for 
his grand conception trembles on the verge 
of making wisdom an actual person. In a 
magnificent description he ascribes to wis- 
dom all conceivable heavenly qualities and 
beneficent activities, so that she seems at 
times to be almost an independent being. 

Thus the way was prepared for the 
apostle's declaration : *' Christ is the wis- 
dom of God." Wisdom to the Hebrew was 
not mere knowledge. It included all prac- 
tical wisdom in the management of affairs 
and the conduct of life. It mounted to the 
religious sphere, beginning in the fear of 
God. More than the Hebrew sage thought 
he found in wisdom, the manifestation of 
the divine power and benignity, the Christian 



iProv. viii, 27-31. 



CHRIST, THE REVELATION OF GOD 29 

finds in Him who said '' I am the Way, the 
Truth and the Life." 

*' In Him again 
We see the same first, starry attribute ; 
' Perfect through suffering,' our salvation's seal 
Set in the front of His Humanity. 
For God has other Words for other worlds, 
But for this world the Word of God is Christ." 



CHAPTER VII. 
CHRIST, THE MESSIAH. 

" I am the Messiah." John iv, 26. 

'' Strong Son of God, immortal Love." 

— Tennyson, 

Israel's conception of a Messiah in an- 
other way prepared for the coming of Christ. 
The way in which worldly and physical con- 
ceptions may in process of time be trans- 
formed into spiritual ideas is nowhere better 
illustrated than in the history of the Mes- 
sianic idea. 

This idea first found a home in Hebrew 
hearts after the beginning ol the kingdom. 
In the earliest period of Israel's history only 
the kings were anointed, though afterwards 
it became the custom to anoint the priests 
also. The first to be called " the Lord's 
Anointed/' (i. e., the Lord's Messiah, or 
Christ), was king Saul, who was thus desig- 
nated by David. In due time David himself 
became the king, or '-the Lord's Anointed." 
David, too, united Israel into a nation as 
she had never been united before, and by his 
30 



CHKIST, THE MESSIAH 31 

conquests over the surrounding countries, 
established an empire which held in subjec- 
tion many vassal nations. This national 
glory lasted through the reign of Solomon, 
after which dissension and division within, 
and increased power on the part of neigh- 
boring nations without, caused Israel gradu- 
ally to sink from the position of mistress to 
that of vassal. 

It was under these circumstances that 
devout minds began to think of a Messiah, 
or an Anointed of the Lord, who could re- 
store their old fortunes. It was natural that 
then they should look back to the reign of 
David and his kingdom as the pattern of 
all which they desired. Thus Hosea pic- 
tured the Messiah as '' David their king " ; ^ 
Isaiah as a kingly warrior, supernatural in 
strength,^ who should establish a kingdom 
of perfect righteousness and justice.^ While 
this ideal continued to fill the hearts of pro- 
phetic enthusiasts with hope, the exile came 
and went, and the long years of the Persian 
supremacy dragged on without bringing ap- 
parently nearer the realization of their hopes. 

1 Hos. iii, 5. " Isa. ix, 6. » Isa. xi. 



32 CHRIST, THE MESSIAH 

As one generation after another, which 
had shared in these expectations, died, the 
conceptions entertained of the kingdom 
gradually changed. At first it had been 
thought that only those who were fortunate 
enough to be alive at the appearing of the 
Messiah would share in it, but afterward it 
was thought that in connection with the 
coming of the Messiah the dead would be 
raised, that the pious Israelites who had 
died in hope might share in the joys of the 
kingdom, and that their foes, who had been 
permitted to die unpunished, might meet 
their proper reward. ^ At the same time 
greater emphasis was laid on the super- 
natural character of the kingdom. Men 
began to expect it to descend in some way 
from heaven, or to expect God to come down 
in some especial manifestation in order to 
inaugurate it. The great monarchies, at 
whose hands Israel had suffered, were typi- 
fied by beasts ; the emblem of this kingdom 
was a ^' Son of man.'' This term denoted at 
first that Israel's future empire was to be 
less savage and more noble in character 



Dan. xii, 3, 4. 



CHRIST, THE MESSIAH 33 

than the great world monarchies which 
had preceded it ; but in a little while it 
became a name for the expected Messiah 
himself. 

The years, however, still dragged on, and 
the great empires, though they changed, 
seemed to grow ever more powerful. Natur- 
ally men asked themselves with increasing 
earnestness whence one could come who 
should be powerful enough to contend with 
these, and with graduall}^ increasing clear- 
ness the answer seemed to them to be that 
he must be from heaven. ^ They, therefore, 
began to believe in the pre-existence of the 
Messiah, and to think of him as one whose 
destiny had been from the beginning more 
glorious before God than that of any of the 
angels. They called him the Son of God,^ 
and expected him to be revealed from 
heaven. 

When Christ came the Jewish world was 
deeply stirred by the expectation of this Mes- 
siah. When Jesus had been accepted by 
His followers as the long-expected " Lord's 



1 Ethiopic Enoch xlviii, 1-3 ; xlix, 2-4 ; li, 1-3 ; and Apocalypae of 
Baruch xxx, 1. « Eth. Enoch cv, 2. 4 Esd. xiv. 9. 



34 CHRIST, THE MESSIAH 

Anointed/' it is easy for us to see why they 
thought of Him as having had a pre- 
existent life with God, and why they so 
readily recognized Him as the Son of God. 

The nature of the kingdom which Christ 
announced was, however, very different from 
that which His contemporaries expected. 
They looked for one who would make Jeru- 
salem a new Rome ; He labored to establish 
a kingdom of truth. They longed to con- 
quer the world and wreak vengeance on 
their enemies; He taught the conquest of 
one's own spirit and the forgiveness of ene- 
mies. They longed to rule the world ; He 
taught them to serve the world. They 
dreamed of a kingdom of force ; He estab- 
lished a kingdom of love. The Messianic 
conception prepared the way for the work 
of Christ, but He so transformed it that it 
has become an ideal, first of Spiritual life 
with God, and then of a human society in 
which all shall recognize that they are 
brethren because all look upon God as 
Father. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

CHRIST, THE CAPTAIN OF SALVA- 
TION. 

** He Himself hath suffered being tempted. Heb. ii, 18. 

** Where now with pain thou treadest, trod 
The whitest of the saints of God ! 
To show thee where their feet were set, 
The light which led them shineth yet." 

— Whittier. 

How Christ transformed the current views 
of the Messiah and the Messianic kingdom 
will come more clearly to our view, if we 
study carefully the narrative of His tempta- 
tion. 

His inner nature we cannot fully compre- 
hend. We do not understand fully the 
inner life of the great geniuses of our race, 
much less can we hope to understand all the 
workings of His mind. The Gospels make 
it clear, however, that He had not only a 
human body, but a human mind. He 
grew in wisdom as well as in stature. ^ 
This implies that at first He was not con- 
scious of His exalted mission as the Messiah. 



1 Luke ii, 52. 

35 



36 CHRIST, THE CAPTAIN OP SALVATION 

Without doubt He was conscious of God^s 
fatherhood as no other had ever been, for 
He felt as a mere boy the duty and the 
delight of being occupied with the things of 
His Father. 1 But at the time of His bap- 
tism an illumination, unique even for Him, 
convinced Him that He was none other 
than the long expected Messiah. The voice 
which said to His heart, ^' Thou art my 
beloved Son,'^ was the divine assurance of 
the Messianic calling. 

Conscious as He had long been of the 
spiritual significance of the Fatherhood of 
God and of the higher aspects of relation- 
ship with Him, conscious too of the marvel- 
lous nature and role which the Messiah was 
expected to possess, He retired to the wilder- 
ness to think over His lofty opportunities 
and responsibilities. Lifted at first above 
the notice of ordinary necessities, His exalted 
meditations were at last interrupted by the 
rude demands of hunger. This seems to 
have brought about a crisis in His thought. 
Could the Messiah hunger ? His reign, the 
Jews believed, was to be inaugurated by a 

1 Lukeii. 49. 



37 



great feast. Could the heavenly Being, who 
was popularly believed to have had such an 
exalted and glorious career before God from 
the beginning, really be subject to the laws 
of the physical life as ordinary mortals were? 
If He were really the Son of God should 
not supernatural power enable Him to put 
away at once the clamorous demands of this 
earthly nature ? 

No ! was His reply ; it is far more import- 
ant to obey God^s will than to escape from 
the sufferings and the limitations which He 
has appointed I Messiahship means, not 
exemption from the common lot of men, but 
the ability to take up that lot and do God's 
appointed work in it ; not selfish ease, but 
unselfish service. Thus He put aside one 
of the temptations which the prevailing 
Messianic expectations brought to Him. 

But this was only the beginning. If He 
could not use the power which men expected 
the Messiah to possess for His own ease, was 
He really to be the king for whom they 
were looking ? ^ He could not help know- 
ing how gladly His countrymen, groaning 

* Luke, I believe, gives the temptations in their true order. 



38 CHRIST, THE CAPTAIN OF SALVATION 

as they were under the hated yoke of Rome, 
would rally to His standard, were He but to 
proclaim Himself their heaven-sent deliv- 
erer. Worldly power and magnificence, the 
glory and the adulation which accompany 
empire, for one brief moment tempted even 
Him ; then He put them resolutely aside. 
He had not lived those thirty years of 
unique communion with the Father with- 
out knowing that the real service of God 
was not thus performed. The real kingdom 
of God he knew to be in the hearts of men ; 
the real conquest of men by God must be 
not a conquest of arms, but of love ; the 
weapons of the war must be the imple- 
ments of loving service, not the deadly arms of 
martial force ; accordingly the alluring vision 
of the popularly expected empire was calmly 
dismissed, and the way of toilsome self-sacri- 
fice and of the cross was deliberately chosen. 
One other temptation, however, came to 
Him. Were all these fervid descriptions 
of the Messiah's supernatural nature to have 
no outward fulfilment ? Might He not at 
least make some external display at Jerusa- 
salem before the eyes of assembled thousands 



CHKIST, THE CAPTAIN OF SALVATION 39 

of the exalted nature which was His. No I 
That, too, would be wrong ; it would be an 
attempt to test God, or to force Him to dis- 
play His intimate connection with the Mes- 
siah. The only right way was to take the 
path of duty, to assume the burdens of 
service and the lowly place of a servant, 
and leave God to manifest the divinity and 
majesty of it all as He might see was best. 

Thus, in the mind of the Master the old 
conceptions of the Messiah and the Mes- 
sianic king were forever put aside, and His 
life was devoted to the establishment of the 
spiritual kingdom of love. The roots of 
the Messianic idea go back to the natural 
soil of the earthly and half-barbarous em- 
pires of Saul and David, but its flower 
which appeared on earth in the life of Jesus 
Christ, is multiplying more and more and is 
the ideal for the highest life of earth and 
the perfect life of heaven. 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

" But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send 
you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, 
which proceedeth from the Father, He shall bear 
witness of me." John xv, 26. 

"Speak to him thou for He hears, and Spirit with 

spirit can meet — 
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands 

and feet." 

— Tennyson. 

In very early times man perceived that it 
was the inner, impalpable part of him that 
thought, planned, and aspired. This led him 
to suppose that his God was possessed of a 
Spirit analogous to his own. As a great 
man could inspire others with his courage 
or spirit in great crises, such as important 
battles, so it was thought that God could 
impart to men on such occasions the cour- 
age and might of His own spirit. Thus it 
happens that in the early days of Israel's 
history we hear of the Spirit of God chiefly 
in connection with the warlike exploits of 
military heroes, such as Samson and Saul.^ 

*See Judges xiv, 6, 19 ; 1 Sam. xvi, 14. 
40 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 41 

This was, however, the lowly beginning of 
the entrance into men's minds of the sub- 
lime truth that the Spirit of God enters into 
the hearts of men and communes with 
them. 

A few centuries later, when the inward 
and spiritual nature of religion was more 
clearly perceived, the spirit of God was be- 
lieved to enter into communion with the 
hearts of His prophets, to inspire, to illumi- 
nate, to instruct them, and to impart to 
them His will.^ One of the Psalmists, — 
that one who most clearly perceived the 
inward and spiritual nature of sin,^ — 
grasped the truth that the joyful communion 
of the Divine Spirit is conditioned upon the 
possession of a pure heart. 

In the period represented by the Old 
Testament Apocryphal books, some noble 
conceptions concerning the Spirit of God 
were entertained. One writer sang of it as 
the Spirit which fills the world, and is in 
all things.^ Another speaks of it as the 
image of God, and the indivisible source of 



^Cf. Isa. xlviii, 16, Ps. li, 12, Dan. iv, 8. ^Ps. U, 12. aWisdom of 
Solomon i, 7, and xii, 1. 



42 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

understanding and knowledge.* None of 
these pre-Christian writers regarded the 
Spirit as a distinct person of the Godhead; 
but their conceptions, which advanced 
steadily from the crude germ of the days of 
the Judges, prepared the way for the lofty 
conceptions of Christianity. 

At the beginning of the Synoptic narrative 
of Christ's ministry^ we are told that the 
Spirit descended as a dove and abode upon 
Him. This means, as we have seen, that 
then a new illumination came to Him, 
which made clear to Him what His exalted 
mission and work were to be. Thus we are 
taught by His experience to look upon the 
Spirit as the source of inspiration for lofty 
duties, and the guide into the deeper ex- 
periences of life. 

According to the Gospel of John, ^ Christ, 
in His last discourse with His disciples, 
promised to send the Spirit to be a Comforter 
and Guide,— to take the place in their 
thoughts and hearts which He had Himself 
occupied, and to lead and inspire them as 



^Viz :— Philo. See Toy's Judaism and Christianity, p. 92. *Mk. 
i, 10 ; Mt. iii, 16 ; Lu. iii, 22. ^John xv, 26, xvi, 13. 



THE HOLY SPIRIT 43 

He had done. A later record tells us of 
the great experience when that promise 
began to be fulfilled, as that experience was 
gratefully remembered by a later generation. 

Paul; in the eighth chapter of Romans, 
teaches that it is the function of the Spirit 
to commune with, inspire and guide the 
regenerate nature of man. This regenerate 
nature he terms spirit, in part to distinguish 
it from the natural unregenerate soul, and 
in part to indicate its kinship to the Divine 
Spirit, with which it holds communion. 
He here portrays the ideal experience of 
every Christian. To possess a purified spirit, 
to walk through life's hard paths under its 
control rather than under the hateful con- 
trol of the passions which spring from the 
flesh, to be led and inspired by the Spirit of 
God continually, — this is to be a Christian — 
a child of God. How exalted the privilege ! 
How few live on these lofty table lands ! 

Though few attain to the highest experi- 
ences to which the Spirit would lead them, 
in some degree He comes to every believer. 
To every Christian, says Paul in another 

»Act8ii. 2Vs. 4-9. 



44 THE HOLY SPIRIT 

passage/ is given a manifestation of the 
Spirit of God. He gives to each his own 
peculiar gifts, and inspires each to his own 
peculiar work. No other can do that work, 
but by the harmonious union of all gifts, 
great and small, the great work of God will 
make progress in the world. 

More than this, the Spirit visits every 
man, strives with him, teaches him to " deny 
irreverence and lust '^ and to live a life of 
righteousness and peace. 2 Not the posses- 
sion of a privileged few is the Spirit of God. 
The heart of every man, black or white, 
high or low, rich or poor, at times is 
conscious of the presence of this heavenly 
Visitor. Those who heed His promptings 
experience a lasting peace and an eternal 
joy. *' Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, pati- 
ence, meekness, kindness," and all other 
'' fruits of the Spirit" adorn and make glori- 
ous their lives, ^ 



U Cor. xii, 7. ^Titus ii, 12. 'Gal. v, 22. 



CHAPTER X 
MAN. 

" Thou hast made him but little lower than God." 
Ps. viii, 5. 

" For we are also His offspring. Acts xvii, 28. 

*' All that hath been majestical 
In life or death, since time began, 
Is native in the simple heart of all. 
The angel heart of Man." 

— Lowell. 

There are two sides to human nature, an 
animal or savage side, and a noble godlike 
side. The consciousness of every man bears 
witness to this. Under some circumstances 
man seems to be a demon incarnate ; in 
others, an angel of God. The dual nature of 
man is recognized in the oldest Biblical nar- 
rative of his origin, the second chapter of 
Genesis. God, we are told, moulded the 
form of man from the dust of the ground, 
and " breathed into his nostrils the breath 
of life ; and man became a living soul." 
Kindred on his bodily side to the lowly and 
material earth, man is here conceived to be 
in spirit akin to God Himself. His inner 
45 



46 MAN 

nature is declared to be an afflatus from the 
Eternal Spirit. 

Some centuries later another writer put on 
record his conception of the creation of man. 
We now have his version of it in the first 
chapter of Genesis. His conception of God 
was far more exalted than that of the earlier 
writer; God is no longer represented as 
moulding the form of man from the dust of 
the ground as a potter might do, but in 
sovereign majesty speaks the creative word 
and man becomes man. This writer had, 
however, the same conception of the higher 
nature of man as that set forth by his pre- 
decessor, although he expressed it in a dif- 
ferent way. God, he declared, made man in 
His own image. Perhaps he was thinking in 
some degree of the bodily form of man, but 
probably also of his inner nature, in which 
man yearns for God, thinks in some measure 
God's thoughts, and aspires to be like Him. 

Man is a child of God. He was given at 
his creation a spark of the Father's own 
nature. This truth is in various ways ex- 
pressed in both the Old Testament and in 
the New. The psalmist sang : 



MAN 47 

*' Thou hast made him but little lower than God, 
And crownest him with glory and honor." 

Christ taught in the Parable of the Prodigal 
Son, that man was still God's child no mat- 
ter how degraded he might become or how 
far he might wander from the Father's 
house. God is his Father in spite of all, 
and, prompted by a Father's love, God long- 
ingly waits for the prodigal's return. Paul 
echoed the same truth at Athens in lan- 
guage borrowed from a Greek poet. We, 
he said in substance, are of divine de- 
scent ; children resemble their parents ; we 
ought not, therefore, to entertain unworthy 
thoughts of God, to think of Him as a silver 
or golden image, but to learn from our own 
higher natures something of what our Eter- 
nal Father must be. 

These, then, are the two inspiring aspects 
of the Biblical view of the nature of man, 
the lofty conception of man's origin and 
destiny which it affords, and the worthy 
conception of God. 

" The soul that rises with us, our life's star, 
Hath had elsewhere its setting, 
And Cometh from afar ; 
Not in entire forgetfulness, 



48 MAN 

And not in utter nakedness, 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 
From God, who is our home." 

With such a nature there is no satisfaction 

for man except in God and a godlike life. 

''Thou hast created us for thyself," said 

Augustine, '' and the heart is restless till it 

rests in thee ; " or as Whittier puts it : 

"To turn aside from thee is hell, 
To walk with thee is heaven." 

Man, too, from his own higher nature may- 
learn something of the real nature of God. 
In endeavoring to do this he may easily go 
astray, and may merit the divine rebuke 
which a psalmist conveyed to Israel : " Thou 
thoughtest that I was altogether such a one 
as thyself.'^ Nevertheless, it is this pathway 
which leads man up to the heart of the 
Infinite. To this goal he is guided, not 
alone by the conviction, that 

" Nothing can be good in Him 
Which evil is in me," 

but by the teaching of Jesus Christ, who 
took man at his best, as in the sacred rela- 
tions of father and husband, and made him 
a parable or type of God, the Heavenly 
Father. 



CHAPTER XI. 

SIN AS TRANSGRESSION. 

" When the commandment came, sin sprang into life 
and I died." Rom. vii, 9. 

" Sin hath broke the world's sweet peace — unstrung 
Th' harmonious chords to which the angels sung." 

— Dana. 

Sin is the transgression of law ; it is the 
deliberate abandoning of our ethical ideals ; 
it is the conscious violation of some stand- 
ard, either outward or inward, which con- 
science recognizes as imposing upon us an 
obligatory oughi. Until such an ideal im- 
poses the duties of such an oughi upon us, 
no sin is possible. This is what Paul means 
when he says : '' When the commandment 
came sin sprang into life." 

This truth is in germ embodied in the 
narrative given in the third chapter of 
Genesis. That narrative was originally 
shaped to explain to early men many other 
things than the origin of sin,^ but it never- 
theless sets forth in a form perpetually 



^ For the other aspects of the story of Eden see the writer's 
Sketch of Semitic Origins, Social and Religious, p. 93 ft". 



49 



50 SIN AS TRANSGRESSION 

valid the real beginnings of sin. It pictures 
the divine command which the conscience 
of man recognized ; it sets forth vividly the 
temptation to present indulgence, the rea- 
sons which lead man to prefer immediate 
advantage to the course which conscience 
approves, and the dire consequences and 
the disillusionment which sin brings. In 
this respect it is a mirror of the universal 
experience of mankind. Ideals, which we 
have admired and praised, are abandoned 
in the stress of temptation. We know the 
fruit is forbidden, but it is pleasant to look 
upon and promises to be sweet, so we aban- 
don our standard, take the sinful course, the 
promised joy turns to ashes in our hand, 
and our Eden is lost. 

One of the psalmists recognized that this 
experience is universal. ^' They are all 
gone out of the way ", he sang, '' there is 
none that doeth good, no, not one.'' Cen- 
turies later Paul, as he looked over the Jew- 
ish and Gentile world, could find no better 
language than that of the psalmist in which 
to express the oppressive fact, that sin is 
universal. 



SIN AS TRANSGRESSION 51 

The heart of every man and woman 
recognizes the truth of this Biblical teach- 
ing. The imperative demands of our lofti- 
est ideals have laid upon us divine duties. 
These we have so often abandoned, that it 
needs no labored proof to convince us that 
the first men and women did the same. 
We have inherited from the past weakened 
moral natures, but we have so often aban- 
doned our ethical standards, that our sins 
are definitely our own. 

It is sometimes thought that there is 
an irreconcilable contradiction between the 
evolutionary theory of the origin of man, 
now universally accepted by thinking men, 
and the story of man's fall as given in Gene- 
sis, but this is a great mistake. The narra- 
tive of Genesis, and the traditions of a golden 
age, which come from many ancient peoples, 
picture to us one side of a shield, of which 
the doctrine of evolution gives us the other. 
If man was developed from the lower orders 
of life, there must have been a time when 
he possessed a good degree of intelligence 
and an overflow of animal spirits, but lacked 
almost entirely anything that could be called 



52 SIN AS TKANSGRESSION 

a conscience. At such a period the world 
would seem to him a paradise. He would 
take as much delight in life and be as free 
from care as a lamb gambolling in the 
springtime. Soon, however, increasing intel- 
ligence would give him a conscience ; it 
would enable him to put himself into the 
place of another whom his acts might injure ; 
it would enable him to perceive how that 
other would feel, and to grasp the elements 
of a moral standard of conduct. The mo- 
ment when conscience came, and its behests 
were violated, as they would be sure to be 
at first, the primitive paradise was gone. 
The world which had seemed so blissful, 
and so full of glorious sunshine, began to 
be haunted with the dark spectres which 
spring from an uneasy conscience. Man 
seemed to himself to have fallen ; he could 
tell the story as he recollected it in no other 
terms. He told, too, his inner experiences 
truthfully, and we even now find them true 
to our own experiences. We are able to see 
that man's fall was in the end a step in 
advance, because it became possible only in 
consequence of powers which opened to him 



SIN AS TRANSGRESSION 53 

the possibilities of the highest life, but it 
was nevertheless a real fall from innocence 
and from happiness. 

In this broad sense the old Hebrew nar- 
rative is true as history, while it is also true 
because it reproduces in parable a part of 
the inner history of every man. Whenever 
we deliberately do what we know to be 
beneath the highest standards which our 
hearts approve, we live over again the story 
of Eden, and sadly go forth from peace and 
from God. 



CHAPTER XII. 
SIN AS SEPARATION FROM GOD. 

''Your iniquities have separated between you and 
your God." Isaiah lix, 2. 

" O, may no earth-born cloud arise 

To hide Thee from Thy servant's eyes." 

—Keble. 

The conception of sin, expressed in the 
story of the expulsion of Adam and Eve 
from Eden, involves the idea that it sepa- 
rates the one who commits it from God. 
This view is confirmed by the universal 
experience of mankind. The face of God, 
which seems so bright to the pure in heart, 
is enveloped in darkness for him who has 
indulged in sin; however near God may 
seem to the righteous, the sinner thinks of 
His presence only to fear it. 

It is probable that the early Semitic an- 
cestors of the Hebrews had no conception 
of sin that we would consider worthy of the 
name, and yet they possessed physical 
notions of union with God and of the pos- 
sibility of separation from Him which were 
real types of the spiritual phenomena of sin 

.54 



SIN AS SEPARATION FROM GOD 55 

and atonement. It will make the spiritual 
clearer, if we think for a little of their 
physical antecedents. 

Kinship was regarded as a physical bond ; 
it had its basis, of course, in a common 
birth, but was renewed and kept alive by 
partaking of common food. Eating of the 
same material was thought to make really 
kindred for a time bodies which had origin- 
ally no real kinship. This latter idea lies 
at the basis of the covenant formed by eating 
salt, which is still potent in the East, even 
at the present time. Such covenants of 
kinship were binding, however, only while 
the physical food, of which the contracting 
parties had partaken, was actually in their 
bodies. It would soon wear away, if not 
renewed, and even real kinship would be- 
come somewhat attenuated, if not renewed 
frequently in the common meal. 

At this period of civilization the god was 
thought to be a member of the tribe, related 
to his worshippers by physical bonds of 
kinship. It was thus that the Semitic 
ancestors of the Hebrews pictured to them- 
selves the truth that man is a partaker of 



56 SI^^ AS SEPARATION FROM GOD 

the divine nature. In the stress of life they 
thought that this physical bond might be 
worn away and weakened like the similar 
bonds which bound them to their brethren. 
Their whole conception of life had regard 
exclusively to the physical ; they could, 
therefore, have little conception of the in- 
ward or spiritual nature of sin. Sin, as 
they conceive it, was a weakening of the bond 
of physical kinship, which bound them to 
their god. It was, nevertheless, truly con- 
ceived as separation from him, and was 
thus a real type of later and better con- 
ceptions. 

Man, as we saw above, is a child of God ; 
there has been given to him a spark of the 
divine nature. However germinal and un- 
developed this may be, it is nevertheless 
present in the breast of every human being. 
It may be distorted and defaced almost 
beyond recognition, but it is still there ; the 
prodigal may have lived long in degrada- 
tion, and all the outward marks of his son- 
ship may be gone, but until the conscience 
is utterly seared and the soul made wholly 
insensible to higher impulses, this divine 



/ 



SIN AS SEPARATION FROM GOD 57 

image remains, even though a wreck, and 
is the basis of the hope of the man's restora- 
tion and redemption. 

Sin, which, in one aspect, is a violation 
of our best standards of life, is, in another 
aspect, doing violence to our divine descent. 
It strikes a blow at the divine image within 
us ; it attenuates our kinship to our Father; 
it interrupts our communion with Him ; it 
is separation from Him. Could man live 
entirely as a child of God, he would not 
sin ; he would be true to his higher nature. 
But the clamorous voices of appetite lead 
him into the devious paths of selfishness 
and wrong, where with shrunken heart, 
darkened soul, and despairing spirit he 
learns that he is separated from God, from 
peace, and from happiness, and there rises 
in his heart a longing for forgiveness, for 
restoration to his Father, and for a better 
life.i 



^For fuller statements of the facts given in this chapter, see W. 
Robertson Smith's Religion of the Semites^ Lecture II, and H. 
Clay Trumbull's Salt Covenant. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE SACRIFICIAL ELEMExNT IN 
ATONEMENT. 

" As thou, Father, art in union with me and I with 
thee, so that they also may be in union with us." 
John xvii, 21. 

'' The healing of His seamless dress 
Is by our beds of pain ; 
We touch Him in life's throng and press, 
And we are whole again." 

— Whittier. 

In the seventeenth chapter of John ex- 
pression is given to the highest spiritual 
conception of the purpose of Christ's work. 
It is there declared to be the bringing of 
men into a union with Himself such as He 
enjoys with God, His Father. This is the 
spiritual fruitage, the germ of which we find 
in primitive Semitic and early Hebrew con- 
ceptions of atonement. 

As we have seen the early Semite thought 
that the bond of kinship, which bound 
him to his God, might become attenuated. 
When it was thus weakened he natur- 
ally thought that the success of his life 

58 



SACRIFICIAL ELEMENT IN ATONEMENT 59 

depended upon its renewal. The way in 
which he conceived its renewal to be ef- 
fected has a direct bearing on our subject. 
A victim, kindred both to his god and to 
himself, was sacrificed, and was then con- 
sumed in a meal, of which both he and his 
god, according to his conception, partook. 
That victim, supplying to both the god and 
his worshipper a common life by means of 
material drawn from their common source, 
bound god and man together in a new 
unity.* 

This conception of the meaning of sacri- 
fice was entertained by the Hebrews in the 
early days of their history, and underlay the 
sacrificial ritual of the Jewish church of 
later days. Thus the sacrifices at Shiloh, 
which were attended by the parents of 
Samuel, 2 were festival meals, as was also that 
which Saul attended at Zuph with Samuel. ^ 
Since such sacrifices were thought to bind 
the worshippers together in a kindred life 
they were used to seal solemn covenants. 
Thus in the oldest account that we have 



^ For details and proof see W. Robertson Smith's Religion of the 
SemiteSi Lectures vi-xi. » i gam. i. 3 1 Sam. ix, 13 and 22-24. 



60 SACRIFICIAL ELEMENT IN ATONEMENT 

of the covenant^ which Jehovah made with 
His people at Sinai, (Ex. xxiv, 1, 2, and 
9-11), the covenant is sealed by a sacrifice, 
which is simply a meal eaten by Moses 
and the elders of Israel with Jehovah. By 
this time it was realized that Jehovah was 
of too spiritual a nature to eat viands like 
a man, but He was thought to partake of 
the sacrifice in a more refined way by 
smelling its odor. It is for this reason that 
we read so often that *^ Jehovah smelled the 
sweet savor of the sacrifice." 

As time passed on the thought underly- 
ing this ritual was expressed in a different 
way. The altar w^as taken as Jehovah's 
representative, and the blood of the victim 
was sprinkled both upon it and upon the 
people. The blood was to the Hebrews the 
life of the victim, and thus it was thought 
that God and His people were bound to- 
gether in a common life. In the account of 
the covenant at Sinai, which is second in 
point of date, (Ex. xxiv, 3-8), it is thus that 
the covenant is said to have been sealed. 
Similar ritual often appears in other places 
with a similar meaning. For example, the 



SACRIFICIAL ELEMENT IN ATONEMENT 61 

real sacrifice on the day of atonement ^ was 
of this character, its blood was sprinkled on 
the altar to bind the people to Jehovah. 
The goat, which was sent into the wilder- 
ness for the demon Azazel, had nothing to do 
with this ; that sacrifice belongs to a more 
superstitious stratum of thought, and the 
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, in 
using this ritual to illustrate the work of 
Christ, ignores the portion of it, in which 
Azazel figures, confining himself to the por- 
tion which symbolizes the union of the wor- 
shipper with God.^ 

This conception of atonement is the com- 
plement of that conception of sin, which 
pictures sin as separation from God, for it 
heals the breach which sin had caused by 
binding God and man together again in a 
united life. That this was Christ's concep- 
tion of His work, appears not only from the 
Gospel of John, but from the synoptic nar- 
ratives as well. When at the last supper 
He said : " This is my blood of the new 
covenant/'^ He suggested that He was doing 



1 Lev. xvi. ^Heb. x, 1 fF. ^ jxatt. xxvi, 28 ; Mark xiy, 24 : 
Lu. xxii, 20. 



62 SACRIFICIAL ELEMENT IN ATONEMENT 

a work similar to that which the sacrifices 
at the solemnization of the first covenant 
performed. As they bound God and man 
together in a renewed life, so He would bind 
His disciples to God in a new and living 
bond. 

This, then, is the substance of the Gospel 
message ; and it was anticipated in a rude 
type or germ in early Semitic times. Man 
is by nature in some degree akin to God, 
but he does not live the highest life ; he is 
often false to his better nature ; he sins, and 
his sins separate him from God ; they 
weaken the life bond, which united him in 
some degree to his maker ; but Christ the 
Son of God has come into human life to 
unite man again with God ; He comes in 
Spirit still into every heart which will wel- 
come Him ; He renews the higher nature, 
kindles heavenly ideals, strengthens the will 
to achieve the best, introduces into com- 
munion with the Father, enables one to live 
in accordance with his better nature, and the 
man is saved by union with God. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE FUNCTION OF SUFFERING IN 
ATONEMENT.! 

**By his knowledge shall my righteous servant 
make many righteous, and he shall bear their iniqui- 
ties." Isa. liii, 11. 

** For humanity sweeps onward ; where to-day the 

martyr stands, 
On the morrow crouches Judas w^ith the silver in his 

hands ; 
Far in front the cross stands ready and the crackling 

fagots burn, 
While tna hooting mob of yesterday in silent awe 

return 
To glean up the scattered ashes into History's golden 

urn." 

— Lowell. 

Knowledge in this world involves pain. 
The power to know is included in the 
power to suffer. Sensation through which 
knowledge comes conveys both painful and 
pleasurable impressions. From a compari- 
son of these, intelligence comes. The simpl- 
est things we know have come to us through 
our own pain or that of our predecessors. 



^A large part of this chapter waa publiahed in the American 
Friend in 1898. 

63 



64 THE FUNCTION OF SUFFERING 

Pain has been the great motive power by 
which the race has advanced. The animal 
and the savage bask in the sunshine^ idle 
and thoughtless, till the sun moves on and 
cold compels them to seek protection. 
Hunger is the motive power of industry. 
Civilization has directly sprung from pain, 
and pain is the door through which those 
deeper problems of life and its meaning 
enter, — problems which compel the soul to 
cast itself upon God. 

It is, then, neither an accident nor a false 
analysis of life which leads the prophet in 
this great poem on the Sufferer to couple 
knowledge with suffering ; for a moment's 
reflection makes it clear that with knowl- 
edge the power to suffer is increased. The 
sensitive ear of the musician, taught to de- 
tect harmonies which to our duller sense are 
obscure^ is harassed by a thousand discords 
which are powerless to give us pain. The 
eye of the trained artist, skilled to detect 
beauties which we pass unnoticed, is also 
pained by uglinesses of which we remain 
ignorant. The sensitive soul, capable of 
catching some glimpse of immortal joys, 



THE FUNCTION OF SUFFERING 66 

may be tortured with visions of exquisite woe 
which the gross have no power to appreciate. 

But suffering, though so beneficent, is 
universally misunderstood. The savage 
thinks it the penalty of an angry divinity, 
and abandons the sick and suffering because 
his god is offended with them. Our very 
word pain comes from this conception of 
penalty. Many a thoughtful Christian mis- 
understands it almost as much as the 
savage. The prophet confesses that he and 
his contemporaries misunderstood it. As 
they looked upon the ideal Servant — 
whether he was to them an individual or 
the righteous kernel of the nation we do not 
know — they thought God was punishing 
him. '' We did esteem him stricken, 
smitten of God, and afflicted.'^ But as the 
prophet gazed there dawned upon his soul 
the great truth that suffering is redemptive : 
^^He was wounded for our transgressions, 
He was bruised for our iniquities ; the chas- 
tisement of our peace was upon Him, and 
with His stripes we are healed," 

The redemptive power of suffering is one 
of the marvels of life. A noble soul catches 



66 THE FUNCTION OF SUFFERING 

some gleam of truth not before known — 
it may be only a discovery in mechanics, 
but a discovery which will greatly aid the 
processes of human economy. He declares 
his knowledge, but the world doubts ; he 
insists on his message, but men scoff; he 
becomes to them a fanatic, a crank, or an 
insane enthusiast. The man passes his life 
in bearing the pains of misunderstanding 
and poverty, and it is often not till he is 
gone that men learn to appreciate and 
utilize his knowledge. Because of the dull- 
ness of humanity the inventor must, as a 
rule — happily our age is reversing this — 
suffer long to teach the world his truth and 
raise humanity even a little. It is thus 
that our common comforts and appliances 
have been purchased. Purple with the life- 
blood of some of earth's best spirits is the 
pathway over which our daily conveniences 
have come to us. 

In the spiritual and moral realm this is 
pre-eminently true. The reformer and pro- 
phet come with their vision of a higher life, 
but their message is received with scorn by 
those who are wedded to the flesh-pots or 



THE FUNCTION OF SUFFERING 67 

shibboleths of the present order. Truth is 
trampled upon ; its messenger bleeds ; his 
life is passed in a living martyrdom till at 
last the message burned into men's hearts 
by his patient suffering is welcomed, and a 
race steps forward to a higher plane of life. 

All this reaches its highest exemplifica- 
tion in the life of Jesus Christ. It does not 
detract from the divine character of His 
suffering that it conforms to this universal 
type ; that suffering is God's own seal upon 
the law of life's progress which He himself 
established. 

We sometimes think of the suffering of 
Christ as though it were the suffering of 
the crucifixion only. That was, indeed, the 
climax, but His v>^hole life was a life of pain. 
How could it be otherwise with one who 
brought to man such new and momentous 
knowledge as He did ? Men had here and 
there ventured to guess that God was 
a Father, but the practical knowledge of 
the Fatherhood of God as Christ taught 
it was quite new. How could one who 
taught that God is Spirit fail to win the 
hate of those who desired to confine God to 



68 THE FUNCTION OF SUFFERING 

their little sanctuary that they might have 
a monopoly of Him? When He declared 
that God is light must He not offend those 
whose hearts were dark with ecclesiastical 
deceit? When He said that God is Love, 
He must range against himself those who 
were full of hatred, and wished to serve a 
God who would justify their hate. But espe- 
cially when He told men who were looking 
for a Messianic kingdom, of which Jerusa- 
lem should be the capital, and to which the 
treasures of the world should flow — a king- 
dom which should satisfy their greed, their 
love of power and revenge, that the king- 
dom of God comes not with observation, 
that it is within, that its magnates are not 
rulers, but servants, is it any wonder that 
His heart was pierced with the hate of these 
men ? Conscious of the Fatherhood of God 
as man had never been, His life revolved 
about a centre unknown to others. What 
suffering the hateful discords of earth must 
have caused that ear attuned to the har- 
mony of heaven ! He was never under- 
stood. His brethren thought Him mad. 
The crowds which for a time followed for 



THE FUNCTION OF SUFFERING 69 

loaves and fishes forsook Him when He 
refused to proclaim Himself a king. Kabbis, 
who fattened on the patronage of a system 
grounded in a this-worldly theology, soon 
perceived that there must be eternal warfare 
between their system and His, and ulti- 
mately secured His condemnation. The 
three disciples who seem to have been most 
able and most desirous of understanding 
Him, failed Him in Gethsemane and went 
to sleep when He most longed for sympathy. 
It was then, when He faced this world of 
misunderstanding, hatred and incompetence, 
each aspect of which seemed to render His 
task hopeless and to fling back His love 
upon itself, that He " began to be greatly 
amazed and sore troubled." Surely His 
suffering was not confined to the cross ! 
Such suffering as His was only possible in 
One who possessed such knowledge, and it 
was life-long, though it culminated in Cal- 
vary. 

But how often has this suffering been 
misunderstood ! We have " esteemed Him 
smitten of God " — have thought the Father 
was imposing penalty on Him, while '' He 



70 THE FUNCTION OF SUFFERING 

was wounded for our transgressions,'^ and 
the chastisement of our peace was upon 
Him." The stripes came from us, not 
God, but by them we were healed. Hearts 
unmoved by all else have responded to the 
suffering of Jesus. It has convinced men 
of the love of God, and drawn them unto 
Him. ''By His knowledge He has made 
many righteous ; and borne their iniqui- 
ties." 

The sufferings of Christ have been as a 
window through which men could catch a 
glimpse of the long-suffering love of God. 
In God is the perfect and unlimited knowl- 
edge; in Him, the spotless purity ; in Him, 
the blending of all high qualities and deli- 
cate powers. His must the infinite suffer- 
ing be, in view of the sin, the insensibility 
and the beastliness of man. The power of 
that suffering love over the hearts of men, 
as it is revealed in the suffering Son, is the 
heavenly power which melts hard hearts, 
and brings the prodigal home. 



CHAPTER XV. 
THE TEMPLE OF THE HEART. 

" Know ye not that ye are a Temple of God.*' 1 
Cor. iii, 16. 

" Invisible and silent stands 
The temple never made with hands, 
Unheard the voices still and small 
Of its unseen confessional." 

— Whittier. 

In ancient times the gods were not thought 
to be everywhere, but were localized. Cer- 
tain spots, where vegetation grew luxuri- 
antly or some other circumstance persuaded 
men that the divine was especially mani- 
fested, were believed to be the dwelling 
places of gods. In other places man could 
do much as he pleased, but when he ap- 
proached the temple of God he must do as 
God pleased. If it were necessary to ap- 
proach an earthly potentate with ceremony, 
much more was it necessary to approach 
with proper form the dwelling place of God. 
His home was believed to be surcharged 
with his presence as a kind of divine elec- 
tricity. If any were so bold as to approach 

71 



72 THE TEMPLE OF THE HEAKT 

this sanctuary in a way displeasing to its 
divine inhabitant, this supernatural power 
might be discharged as it w^as in the case of 
Uzzah, (2 Sam. vi), and the man might be 
instantly destroyed ; but if he came in the 
right way, the inexhaustible strength of the 
indwelling deity was lavished upon his 
prosperity. 

It is these ideas, universal in the time of 
Paul, that he applies mystically and with 
such moral effect in the Corinthian Epistles. 
He employs for spiritual edification the old 
idea of the taboo as it had been raised to its 
highest power by the Jew. The principle 
underlying it is, when translated into 
terms of the spirit, true. God is Spirit; 
man is spirit. The one is the dw^elling 
place of the other. If " in Him we live and 
move and have our being," so He would 
live in us ; He has designed the spirit of 
man for His temple. That spirit is intim- 
ately associated with, or is a part of, a mind ; 
it dwells in a physical body. It cannot be 
pure if the mind delights in the impure, 
or if the body makes its animal passions the 
master of the whole. If the Spirit of God 



THE TEMPLE OF THE HEART 73 

cannot keep the human spirit so pure that 
it has power to keep the mind on themes 
which are elevated — if the mind has not 
power to make the body its servant rather 
than its master, then the temple of God is 
defiled, — destroyed ; then the man too is 
defiled, — destroyed. No law in all the uni- 
verse is more sure or inexorable than this. 
The drunkard and the debauchee afford its 
worst examples, but wherever stunted lives 
and dwarfed consciences are to be seen, 
there we may be sure the temple of God has 
been devoted to profane uses. The destruc- 
tion is not completed, but it is going on. 

On the other hand real prosperity goes 
with purity. Of such Paul declares God's 
word to be : *' I will dwell in them and 
walk in them, and I will be their God and 
they shall be my people." It was thus that 
Paul translated the old unreasoning and 
half-superstitious taboos of the primitive 
sanctuaries into spiritual values. The heart 
a temple for God ! The life interpenetrated 
by His love, moulded by His spirit ! This 
is the supreme privilege of life ! No wonder 



74 THE TEMPLE OF THE HEART 

that he who casts it away is by that very 
fact dwarfed, defiled, undone, destroyed I 

Inspiring as these suggestions are there 
are others which come to us of which Paul 
did not dream, because he did not know the 
evolution of the temple as it is known to- 
day. Men thought at first that their deity 
dwelt in some natural object, a tree, a spring, 
a crag, or something of that kind. Such 
had been the belief of the early Hebrews 
and their ancestors. Then they conceived 
the idea that God could be persuaded to 
reside in a stone of their own selection ; 
thus Jacob set up a stone at Bethel and 
called it God's house. These monoliths, or 
heaps of stones as they sometimes were, 
served at first as temple, idol and altar all 
in one. To come into contact with them was 
to come into contact with the god who 
dwelt within. Sacrifices were off'ered on 
them, blood poured out over them, and 
other gifts cast on them. In course of time 
they were carved into various idol forms or 
houses built over them. The houses, rude 
at first, in course of time gave place to 
temples like those of Solomon and Herod, 



THE TEMPLE OF THE HEART 75 

elaborately adorned with gold and precious 
stones, into which God, though inhabiting 
the heaven of heavens, which could not 
contain Him, nevertheless deigned to come. 
Is not the development of the temple 
from the uncarved and rude pillar up to 
the magnificent building, radiant with all 
that is precious, a parable, too, for our 
encouragement? The heart that has wel- 
comed its heavenly Master is a temple, but 
hov/ poor a temple it knows itself to be ! It 
is like the rude pillar naked to the sky. It 
lacks the sheltering power of the character 
which is to be, it lacks the beautifying 
power of the Christian graces which are yet 
to grow. The years of Christian experi- 
ence, however, produce their effect. The 
divine Indweller of his temple transforms 
the rude, stony heart into His own image ; 
He adorns it with graces like unto His own, 
graces which are the fruits of His own spirit, 
till, by-and-by, it is not only a temple in 
some sense fit for its heavenly Inhabitant, 
but like the ancient temple it has made its 
environment holy, and sanctified and puri- 
fied as much of life as it can influence. It 



76 THE TEMPLE OF THE HEART 

is only the Christian who knows the power 
of this mystic experience who can realize the 
poet's dream : — 

" Build thee more stately mansions, my soul, 
As the swift season's roll ! 
Leave thy low- vaulted past ! 
Let each new temple, nobler than the last. 
Shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast. 

Till thou at length art free. 
Leaving thine outgrown shell by life's unresting 
sea! " 

Another parable, too, suggests itself as 
one broods over Paul's mystic figure. The 
temples of ancient times had no Avindows. 
They were little chambers for the deity, not 
churches for the accommodation of the wor- 
shippers. The deity within dwelt therefore 
in thick darkness. In time this came to be 
symbolic of the mystery which enshrouded 
God and all His ways. It was thus that the 
thick darkness ol Solomon's temple, (1 Kgs. 
viii, 12 ; 2 Chr. vi, 1), is to be understood. 
In the New Testament God no longer 
is thought to dwell in darkness, but in 
the light which no man can approach 
unto, (1 Tim. vi, 11). God is as before 
enveloped in mystery, but Christ has now 



THE TEMPLE OF THE HEART 77 

come and the mystery is no longer one 
of darkness and gloom, but a mystery of 
light and of hope. Is not this, too, a parable 
of Christian experience ? The world with 
all its wondrous order, life with all its pain, 
bereavement, disappointment, and suffering 
are always a mystery, but, whereas at the 
first, the Heart of the mystery is enveloped 
in the gloom of hopelessness and the fear 
that God may be unjust and unlovely, when 
the soul has welcomed its heavenly Guest 
and has become accustomed to His presence, 
the mystery remains, but it is a mystery of 
light, hope and love, the deep things of 
which " eye hath not seen or ear heard.'' 



CHAPTER XVI. 
PRIESTHOOD. 

" Ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests." Ex. 
xix, 6. «' A royal priesthood, a people for God's 
OAvn possession." 1 Pet. ii, 9. 

*' Not on one favored forehead fell 
Of old the fire-tongued miracle, 
But flamed o'er all the thronging host 
The baptism of the Holy Ghost." 

— - Whittier. 

In early Semitic tribal life no domestic 
animals were killed except in sacrifice, and 
every man was his own priest. In other 
words, every occasion when meat was eaten 
had a sacrificial significance, and every man 
could prepare his own meat. The memory 
of this primitive custom is preserved in the 
ritual of the Hebrew Passover, the lamb for 
which was slain, not by a priest, but by the 
head of each family. The introduction of 
the Levitical priesthood was a later occur- 
rence, and in the lapse of time that priest- 
hood so transformed the simple life of early 
times, that almost all priestly functions 
were denied to the ordinary man. The 
78 



PRIESTHOOD 79 

primitive ideal, nevertheless, was cherished 
in the heart of the writer of Exodus xix, 6, 
who looked for a time when all God's 
people should be priests as they M^ere of old. 
When the Old Testament was translated into 
Greek, the translators could not understand 
this primitive ideal. They were thinking 
of legendar}^ families, like that of Cinyras 
in Cyprus, who combined the functions of 
both king and priest, and they accordingly 
translated "a kingdom of priests" by the 
words, "a royal priesthood.'' As Peter 
quoted from the Greek translation of the Old 
Testament, his Epistle is made to favor that 
idea. 

Suggestive as the thought of a royal 
priesthood is, the primitive Christian ideal 
was a revival in a spiritual form of the ideal 
of early times, when every man was his 
own priest. The Master instituted no priest- 
hood ; He held personal relations with every 
disciple. He did not institute two stand- 
ards of holiness, one for the priesthood and 
one for the laity, but placed all on an 
equality : " One is your Master and all ye 



80 PRIESTHOOD 

are brethren." As Lightfoot declared i^ 
" This is the Christian ideal ; a holy season 
extending the whole year round — a temple 
confined only by the limits of the habitable 
world — a priesthood coextensive w^th the 
human race;" 

Such is the infirmity of human nature 
that this ideal was not long maintained in 
organized Christianity. The history of 
Hebrew religion repeated itself; a priest- 
hood intervened so that the primitive ideal 
was almost, if not quite forgotten. During 
the Reformation period various attempts 
were made to restore to each believer his 
primitive privileges. The most thorough 
and successful of these was that of George 
Fox, which resulted in the organization of 
the '' Society of Friends." 

We are not, however, now concerned with 
the perplexing problems of the Christian 
ministry, but with the primitive Christian 
conception of priesthood, of which the 
early Semitic conception was a type. The 
meaning of that ideal is that no one can 



^The Christian Ministry, N. Y., 1883, p. 10, also his Phillip- 
pians, Macmillan, 1890, p. 183, ff. 



PRIESTHOOD 81 

come between a soul and its Savior and God. 
Each one must tread the sacred places of 
life's highest experiences for himself, if they 
are to have any meaning for him ; each 
must intercede for himself, must partake 
personally of the life which unites man to 
God, and must receive for himself the power 
to rise to life's higher plane. The secrets 
of righteousness cannot be learned vicari- 
ously ; it is the duty and the privilege of 
each member of our race to tread the narrow 
pathway, which will lead him to the heart 
of God, and make him in the temple of his 
own heart a priest to God. When each 
man does this, then the Church of Christ 
will become a kingdom of priests, and the 
Master's ideal will be realized. 

The duties of this Christian priesthood 
extend also beyond the bounds of one's own 
life. There are others who stand nearer to 
God than we do, and it is often a comfort to 
have them intercede for us. The privileges 
of intercession for those who are weaker be- 
long to all Christians ; the duty of affording 
to those v/ho have beheld less of the heavenly 
vision an inspiring example rests also upon 



82 PRIESTHOOD 

all. Through lives of purity, hearts abound- 
ing in sympathy, and words touched by the 
inspiration of the diviner life, we may help 
to bring others to appreciate their privileges, 
and to enjoy the rights of their priesthood 
with God. 



CHAPTER XVII 

THE INVENTIONS OF THE SONS 
OF CAIN. 

*' Adah and Zillah, hear my voice ; 

Ye wives of Lamech hearken unto my speech : 

For I have slain a man for wounding me, 

And a young man for bruising me : 

If Cain shall be avenged seven-fold, 

Truly Lamech seventy and seven-fold." 

—Genesis iv, 23, 24. 

This bit of poetry from a dark and re- 
vengeful past now forms a part of the story 
of Cain's sons, as that story is told in 
Genesis. The narrative belongs to the old- 
est stratum of Pentateuchal writings. Its 
author held a very definite point of view 
with reference to the culture of civilized 
men. He himself admired the simplicity of 
the life of the wandering nomads. Their 
life he believed to be comparatively pure, 
and free both from enervating luxury and 
the harsher forms of revenge. 

In contrast to this he pictured the life of 
more civilized man. Civilization, according 
to his conviction, sprang from Cain the 



84 INVENTIONS OF THE SONS OF CAIN 

murderer, who gave birth to a race of mur- 
derers. These men were ingenious ; they 
discovered the process of working iron and 
bronze ; they found out the art of producing 
the harmonious strains of music ; but, 
though wise above their simpler brethren of 
the steppe in both the sterner and the more 
esthetic sides of life, they were still a race 
of murderers. Their superior knowledge 
and added skill only gave them greater 
power to gratify the spirit of revenge, and 
to pander to all that was unworthy and 
degrading. 

In the thought of this writer, the inno- 
cent man is the ignorant man, and the 
happy life, the uncultured life. In this 
view he does not stand alone. Many noble 
spirits in many different ages have looked 
upon life with the eyes of this old nomad, 
and have believed that purity could not 
exist apart from asceticism, and that 
" misery is the thermometer of holiness." 

This point of view finds a certain degree 
of justification in the fact that new power is 
almost universally first used by men for 
selfish or base ends. Wherever intellectual 



INVENTIONS OF THE SONS OF CAIN 85 

advancement outstrips the growth of the 
moral sensibilities the result is to make man 
the meanest of animals; he has intellectual 
ability to be more diabolically cunning and 
revengeful than any other living thing. It 
always happens, too, that each newly ac- 
quired power or bit of knowledge is used by 
man for selfish and hurtful ends, until, led 
by experience of the harmful effects of such 
a course, and by the growth of his moral 
sense, he turns his new abilities to unselfish 
or elevating pursuits. This is sure to come 
in time, if not to the individual, at all events 
to the race ; and thus in this fact the hope 
of progress in things material or spiritual 
lies. 

The Biblical writer was looking upon the 
earlier stages of this process, aud like many 
others in similar situations, he was dis- 
heartened. Lamech and the descendants of 
Cain, like Cain, their ancestor, surpassed 
their more rustic brethren in the knowledge 
of many things but gloating selfishly in 
their superior power, they gratified by it the 
appetites of their dark hatred and bloody 
vengeance. 



86 INVENTIONS OF THE SONS OF CAIN 

This point of view is, however, too narrow. 
An increase in intellectual power will 
ultimately produce an increase in moral 
sense, and lead to higher ideals and better 
aims than would be possible without it. 
Sometimes, it is true, there are individuals 
in whom this does not happen ; they harden 
in their selfishness before the new moral 
sense can burst the shell of self. This need 
not happen, if education is properly con- 
ducted ; and the only hope that the race 
will ever slough off the animal in it com- 
pletely, and become sons of God indeed, lies 
in the promise that we shall 

" Let knowledge grow from more to more, 
But more of reverence in us dwell ; 
That mind and heart according well, 
May make one music as before, 
But vaster." 

We need not, then, take the gloomy view 
of the old nomadic writer, even though we 
can see enough of the reasons which in- 
fluenced him to sympathize with his mood. 
The Lamech of his narrative, like some 
individuals we may have known, serves as 
a sad warning of the ruinous consequences 



INVENTIONS OF THE SONS OF CAIN 87 

of a one-sided development. Salvation from 
such a fate is to be found not in ignorance, 
but in a symmetrical growth, in which the 
intellect is satisfied with truth, the sensibili- 
ties with beauty and affection, and the 
moral nature with goodness. Man is still 
imperfect and selfish ; too often still he 
makes knowledge the handmaid of brutal 
desire ; but the attitude of a believing heart 
is well described by Whittier : 

" I have not seen, I may not see, 

My hopes for man take form in fact, 
But God will give the victory 

In due time ; in that faith I act. 
And he who feels the future sure, 
The baffling present may endure, 
And bless meanwhile the unseen Hand that leads 
The heart's desires beyond the halting steps of deeds." 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

ENOCH. 

" And Enoch walked with God : and he was not ; 
for God took him." Gen. v, 24. 

" Cold in the dust this perish' d heart shall lie, 
But that which warm'd it once shall never die." 

— Campbell. 

*' He said, * What's time ? ' Leave Now for dogs and 
apes! 
Man has Forever." — Browning . 

Among the ancient Semites as among the 
ancient Greeks, there was no clear concep- 
tion of a happy immortal life.^ It was 
thought that the dead went down to the 
underworld where they lived a colorless 
and unhappy existence, longing continually 
for the life of the world which they had left. 
Among both Greeks and Semites, however, 
it was thought that here and there a remark- 
able individual who had been able in some 
unusual way to obtain the favor of the gods 
might escape the abode of the dead in the 
world below the earth, and go directly to 



^For the Greek view see Homer's Odyssey, Bk, xi ; for the Semi- 
tic, Jastrow's Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, Ch. xxt. 

88 



ENOCH 89 

the happy abode of the gods themselves. 
Such was Herakles among the Greeks, Par- 
napishtim, the Noah of the Babylonians, and 
Elijah and Enoch among the Hebrews. 
Most men were thought to go to the world be- 
low. From that world Samuel was brought 
up for a little while, ^ there Isaiah and Eze- 
kiel ^ believed the dead to be, and the un- 
enjoyable life there some of the Psalmists 
commemorated. 3 

In the later Jewish literature, Enoch 
played a most significant part. He was 
the first of those who, in the Hebrew tradi- 
tions, v/as said to have been sufficiently for- 
tunate to escape the underworld. Visions 
of the mysteries of the universe, which he 
was supposed to have seen, were recounted 
by several diff'erent writers,* and were held 
in such high esteem by the early Christians 
that one of them is quoted in the New Test- 
ament Epistle of Jude. ^ 

The idea of immortality, as we understand 
it, was not held by the Hebrews until after 

1 Samuel xxviii, 11-14, ^ Isa. xiv, 9-20, and Ex. xxxii, 13-31. 
3 Psa. Ixxxviii, 10, and cxv, 17. * See Charles's Book of Enoch, 
and Book of the Secrets of Enoch. For the rise of the Enoch tradi- 
tions, see Worcester's Genesis in the Light of Modern Knowledge., 
Appendix III. « gee v, 14. 



90 ENOCH 

their contact with the Greeks, when their 
thinking became colored by the Platonic or 
neo-Platonic philosophy. The germ of the 
thought was, nevertheless, entertained by 
them long before, and had found expression 
in the belief that Enoch and Elijah had 
been translated, i. e. taken directly to the 
abode of God. After the Platonic ideas had 
begun to influence them, they still thought 
that all who died went to Sheol, or the 
underworld, to await a general resurrection 
at the coming of the Messiah. This was 
the view of the Apostle Paul when he wrote 
his earlier Epistles,^ but in the fifth chap- 
ter of second Corinthians he shows that he 
had abandoned it, and was looking for- 
ward to immediate union with God when 
released from the body. He also gives 
expression to the same view in the Epistle 
to the Philippians. ^ 

Viewed historically, therefore, the belief 
in the translation of Enoch is the germ or 
type of the New Testament teaching of 
immortality, and a most suggestive type it 



^ I. e., those to the Thessalonians. See my article in the New 
World. March, 1899, p. no ff. 'Phil, i, 23. 



ENOCH 91 

is. Enoch, as the Epistle to the Hebrews 
delares,^ had the testimony that he pleased 
God ; God, accordingly took him to His 
abode that he might live in a closer union 
and walk with Himself. This story teaches 
in another way, the same lesson that the 
accounts of man's creation teach, and which 
is taught also by the primitive conceptions 
of sacrifice. Man is by his nature and by 
God's favor destined for God's own compan- 
ionship. To attain this is his highest felic- 
ity ; to lose it, his greatest misfortune and 
severest punishment. This destiny, too, is 
not for a day, but for the aeons of eternity 
— aeons of unimaginable length. Could 
we but keep always in mind the truths 
for which the story of Enoch stands what a 
different perspective life would have ! Many 
little things, which now cause us so much 
worry, would take in our minds the insigni- 
ficant position which is theirs by right, and 
other things, which now are often crowded 
into the background of our thought and 
activities, would assume their proper place 
as of supreme significance. 

»Heb. xi,5,6. 



92 ENOCH 

Some aspects of this great truth we of the 
twentieth century are in a better position to 
appreciate than any of our predecessors. 
We are compelled by the science of our time 
to believe in a God who is immanent in His 
world. We know that He is not far from 
every one of us; '4n Him we live and 
move and have our being." We do not 
need to wait for translation to another abode 
in order to walk with Him. His spirit is 
here ; it is the atmosphere of all noble lives, 
the inspiration of all goodness and excel- 
lence. The immortal felicity which we long 
for has its roots in the present, and may 
begin here. The walk with God will never 
be enjoyed in the other world unless it 
is begun in this. Other-worldliness must 
spring from the right kind of this-worldli- 
ness. The soul^ which walks with God 
faithfully in a pure and unselfish life on 
earth, will, with all the faithful of former 
ages, be welcomed into a closer walk with 
the Father, when the " earthly house of 
this tabernacle is dissolved," and we enter 
the house which is ''eternal in the heavens." 



CHAPTER XIX. 

SONS OF GOD. 

*' There shall they be called sons of the living God." 
Romans ix, 26. 

" The lives which seem so poor, so low, 
The hearts which are so cramped and dull, 
The baffled hopes, the impulse slow, 
Thou takest, touchest all, and lo ! 
They blossom to the beautiful." 

— Susan Coolidge. 

From the earliest times men have felt 
that no man could rise above the common- 
place average of human life, and do the 
noblest work of man^ unless there dwelt in 
him a spark of the divine nature. Among 
early men this belief was expressed in very 
crude forms. These forms were, however, 
the only ones suited to their state of intel- 
lectual and spiritual culture, and, though 
they are crude, they, nevertheless, positively 
express the faith that the best in life can 
be achieved only by those who have a kin- 
ship to God. 

Among the Greeks we know that men 
like Herakles were thought to be able to do 

93 



94 THE SONS OF GOD 

their great works because they had a god for 
their father. One trace of a similar concep- 
tion among the Hebrews has survived. In 
the beginning of the sixth chapter of Gene- 
sis we are told that the '^ sons of God saw 
the daughters of men that they were fair; 
and they took them wives of all that they 
chose," (v. 2) ; and further we are told 
(v. 4), that *' when the sons of God came in 
unto the daughters of men, and they bare 
children unto them : the same were the 
mighty men that were of old, the men of 
renown." In this passage the " sons of 
God" are angels.^ The Hebrew writer was 
a monotheist. He could not, like a Greek, 
represent a god as consorting with a human 
wife ; he therefore conceived that an angel, 
or a group of angels, had done so. Later, 
shortly before the beginning of the Christian 
era, it was thought by the author of a part 
of the book of Enoch ^ that these angels 
had fallen or they would not have done this, 
and that by doing it they had introduced 



^ For proof of this see Toy's Judaism and Chrtsit'anity, pp. 147, 
159, Kyle's Early Narratives of Genesis, pji. 93-95, and Worcester's 
Genesis in the Light of Modern Knowledge, ch. xv. ^ See the 
Hook of Enoch, chs. vi-x. 



THE SONS OF GOD 95 

sin into the world. In this opinion many 
others shared, including the authors of 
two of our New Testament Epistles. ^ This 
view was, nevertheless, a later interpreta- 
tion. It was certainly not held by the 
original writer of the story. To him the 
only adequate explanation of the fact, that 
certain men of olden time had risen above 
their fellows and accomplished noble and 
daring deeds, was that they were of heav- 
enly ancestry, — angels were their fathers. 

In presenting this conception the primi- 
tive writer gave expression to a great truth. 
Human life is flat and insipid, if not corrupt 
and debased, except when it has by birth an 
inheritance of the heavenly nature, the 
God-begotten genius, the angelic inspiration, 
or the divine spirit. Men thus regard still 
those who have achieved the greatest work 
for the race. If we look upon Washington 
in a different way from that in which the 
Roman looked upon Romulus or the Hebrew 
upon Moses, the difference is a difference of 
degree, rather than a difference of kind. We 
recognize him as the man raised up and 

^ See Epistle of Jude, 5, 6, and 2 Pet. ii, 4. 



96 THE SONS OF GOD 

prepared by God for the great task which 
he achieved. Liberty has been secured to 
men by sons of God, among whom we 
thankfully count Abraham Lincoln. The 
great geniuses in literature, like Homer and 
Shakespeare, compel men to stand before 
them in awe and confess that such power 
can only come to man as a gift from above. 
But more nearly akin to the meaning of our 
primitive story than any of these is the 
source of the power exhibited by the great 
religious heroes of our race. Whence came 
the power of Elijah, of Amos, of Hosea, of 
Isaiah, and of the other prophets ? Whence, 
that of Paul, of Ignatius, of Clement, of 
Augustine, of Luther, of Savonarola, and of 
George Fox ? Men were they, of like pas- 
sions with us, but, born from above, they 
had the power to hew out for us the high- 
ways of religious liberty. They are among 
the heroes of old, "the men of renown." 

But God is not partial. The same heavenly 
ancestry awaits each one of us. Similar 
power, if not similar work, is offered to us 
all. 



THE 80NS OF GOD 97 

•' The world sits at the feet of Christ, 
Unknowing, Wind and unconsoled ; 
It yet shall touch His garment's fold, 
And feel the heavenly Alchemist 
Transform its very dust to gold." 

" The earnest expectation of the creation," 
says Paul, " waiteth for the revealing of the 
sons of God,''^ and he remarks in the same 
connection, " The whole creation groaneth 
and travaileth in pain together until now.- 
Nineteen centuries have past and still the 
world waits and groans. The world in our 
times teems with herculean tasks, each 
awaiting for its accomplishment the coming 
of some son of God. May that birth and 
anointing come to each of us which will fit 
us to take up the work of these heaven-sent 
heroes, who lift the burdens of mankind ! 



»Romans viii, 19. "Romans viii, 22. 



CHAPTER XX. 
NOAH. 

"By faith, Noah, being warned of God concerning 
things not seen as yet . . . prepared an ark for 
the saving of his house ." Heb. xi, 3. 

" Hide me, my Savior, hide. 
Till the storm of life be past ; 
Safe into the haven guide, 
O receive my soul at last." 

—Charles Wesley, 

The story of the flood, of the building of 
the ark, and the survival of Noah and his 
family, is one of the most familiar in the 
Old Testament. In recent years it has 
received much illumination from archaeolog- 
ical research, and has accordingly attracted 
public attention anew. The foundation of it 
turns out to be a part of an old Babylonian 
epic.^ Study of the Biblical narrative itself 
has also made it evident that the story 
was independently written by two differ- 
ent Hebrew authors, whose narratives were 
afterward combined by an editor into the 



* See Jastrow's Religion of Babylonia and Assyria, p. 494ff., 
Worcester's Genesis in the Light of Modern Knowledge, ch. xvi, 
9X1^ Assyrian and Babylonian Literature, Aldine ed. p. 350 ff. 



NOAH 99 

form in which they now appear in our 
Bibles. 2 

When we put these Hebrew narratives 
into comparison with the older Babylonian 
story from which they were in a way 
derived, the real inspiration of the Biblical 
narrators stands out most clearly. In Baby- 
lon the tale was told in such a way that 
divine things seemed quite trivial, and their 
gods, mean men of gigantic power ; in Israel 
it was told in a way to exalt one's concep- 
tion of God, deepen one's sense of the terri- 
ble nature of sin and the surety of its 
punishment, and to mirror to after genera- 
tions the hope that God would preserve and 
reward the righteous. 

The lesson thus set forth is of peren- 
nial value. Our age perceives, as our fore- 
fathers did not, the instruments by which 
God does His work. We call them second- 
ary causes, but we too often permit our 
vision of these to obscure our consciousness 
of the first and primal Cause. God still 
controls our life. No storm or flood over- 



* See J. E. Carpenter and G. Harfortl-Battersby's Hexateitch 
Vol. II, p. 10 ff. 

L.ofC. 



100 NOAH 

takes us without His knowledge and per- 
mission. '* Not a sparrow falls to the ground 
without your Father." We should see God 
in everything. Back to this living faith 
an age which professes to believe in an 
immanent God needs to be recalled. 

A generation, which has moved away 
from many beliefs which were formerly 
thought to be the safeguards of morality, is 
in danger of losing its power of making 
clear moral distinctions. There is a ten- 
dency to laxity in moral judgments. We 
need to learn again the lesson which the 
Hebrew writers saw in the deluge, and let 
the primary truth, that while the world 
stands sin will inevitably bring ruin, burn 
itself into our hearts. If the Biblical wri- 
ter's interpretation of external events does 
not appeal to us, there are still passing 
before our eyes every year myriads of illus- 
trations of his point. ^* Righteousness exalt- 
eth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any 
people ; " and, " the wages of sin is death." 

Earth's floods are not all past. Floods of 
barbarism, of drunkenness, and injustice 
in the social order still roll about us. 



NOAH 101 

Prophetic spirits perceive that these floods 
bid fair to ruin our modern life, unless some 
ark can be prepared in which society can 
ride upon the fierce tides, which are now 
threatening to submerge her. Like Amos 
and Hosea of old, like Garrison and Whit- 
tier in the anti-slavery days, it is given to 
them to see the right, to obey it, to seek to 
lead others to acknowledge its sway, and to 
build for the future. These men are the 
Noahs of the present generation. They are 
misunderstood, misbelieved, misrepresented, 
and scoffed at, but they are the saviors of 
mankind, the founders of the society of the 
future. The story of Noah is a parable of 
encouragement to such as these ; it assures 
them of the triumph of right, of principle, 
and of faith. Noah is said to have been so 
named because he was destined to give com- 
fort to men,^ so our modern prophets and 
reformers, in so far as they perceive the 
truth and labor for it, are destined to com- 
fort mankind, and give rest to lives now 
tossed upon the feverish tides of unright- 
eousness and injustice. 

1 See Genesis v. 29. The name, Noah, comes from a Hebrew root 
which meaus " to rest ", causative, " to give rest." 



102 NOAH 

May the righteousness, the prophetic 
insight, the lofty faith, and the untiring 
labor of the hero of the deluge be emulated 
by us all ! It is natural to seek a refuge for 
one's self from sin and all its consequences ; 
and it is right so to do. The great Master 
of righteousness and Savior of men will not 
let us seek this for self alone ; He bids us 
work for the salvation of all. 



CHAPTER XXI. 
BABEL. 

* Canst thou by searching find out God ? ' ' Job xi, 7. 

** How silently, how silently, 
The wondrous gift is given ! 
So God imparts to human hearts 
The blessings of His heaven. 
No ear may hear His coming, 
But in this world of sin, 
Where meek souls will receive Him still, 
The dear Christ enters in." 

—Phillips Brooks. 

The fact that different nations or tribes 
speak different languages, and that their 
speech is unintelligible to those outside their 
own borders, made a deep impression upon 
early man. He, like his later descendants, 
sought to understand the cause of so striking 
a phenomenon. The story of the confusion 
of tongues at the tower of Babel contains 
the early Hebrew explanation of this import- 
ant fact. It is an explanation which satis- 
fied a primitive mind, but which we have 
no right to expect will satisfy the condi- 
tions of the- larger knowledge of modern 
103 



104 BABEL 

times. Indeed, we are compelled now to 
recognize that in many respects the expla- 
nation is faulty. 1 For the purposes of this 
meditation, however, we shall dwell on its 
religious rather than its scientific aspects. 

The story is told us in the book of Gene- 
sis by the same writer who penned for us 
the story of Lamech, and to his mind it 
taught the same lesson, viz : — that knowl- 
edge is dangerous, and should not be sought, 
even if it be knowledge of God. The ele- 
ment of truth in this position we have 
already recognized and appreciated.^ Knowl- 
edge without moral purpose is irreverent 
and wicked. When curiosity outruns spir- 
itual insight and selfishness dominates the 
man, superior knowledge makes of him a 
superior demon. 

Another aspect of this story of Babel 
should also claim attention. Its author has 
pathetically pictured an incident in the uni- 
versal search of man for God. Laboriously 



1 For example, there were different languages in the world long 
before the date he mentions, and long before men were civilized in 
Babylonia. His etymology of "Babel", too, is now known to be 
erroneous. See Kyle's, Early Narratives of Genesis p. 137 ff., and 
Worcester's Genesis in the Light of Modern Knowledge ;[>, 512 ff. 
' See above, ch. xvii. 



BABEL 105 

erected towers, weary pilgrimages, the dis- 
tance of which is measured off by repeatedly 
stretching the length of the pilgrim upon 
the ground, forms crushed under the car of 
Juggernaut, and eager saints, standing in 
filth for years on the top of lofty pillars, 
attest the reality of the cry of the human 
heart : '' Oh, that I knew where I might 
find Him ! '' 

This aspect of the story of Babel, which 
is voiced in so much of the Old Testament, 
and rings so pathetically through the book 
of Job, is only adequately met and satisfied 
when we come to the New Testament and 
hear its message. There we are taught that 
man is not engaged in a fruitless quest for 
a God who ever escapes him, but that God 
is as eagerly seeking man as man is seeking 
God. This truth is expressed in many par- 
ables : that of the woman seeking her lost 
coin ; that of the shepherd seeking the 
straying sheep ; that of the father watching 
for the prodigal son. God has been engaged 
in the search much longer than man ; His 
Spirit broods over each heart seeking an 
entrance into it. Man has missed Him 



106 BABEL 

because he sought Him wrongly. No one 
has to ascend up into heaven to bring Him 
down, nor to descend into the deep to bring 
Him up, nor destroy the body with ascetic 
excesses to discover Him, nor to compass 
the secrets of the universe to gain knowledge 
of Him. '' Raise the stone and there thou 
shalt find me, cleave the wood and there 
am I," says Jesus in the long -forgotten 
verse recently recovered in Egypt. ^ But 
we learn the lesson slowly. God comes to 
us in common things. He reveals himself 
in familiar faces, in the daily routine of life, 
in its little details, in its prosaic drudgery, 
in its little joys, and even in its sorrows. 
The still small voice of His Spirit speaks, 
and wherever one will listen, will bid Him 
welcome and will heed His voice, there God 
is found. Not the supreme effort of a Babel- 
like tower, but the silent surrender of the 
life to God, is the one requisite. 

" Where meek souls will receive Him still, 
The dear Christ enters in." 

His presence is manifested in the fact that 
there the confusion of Babel is replaced by 
harmony, love, and a heavenly peace. 

* See Greenfell and Hunt's Sayings of our Lord, p. 12. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

THE CALL OF ABRAHAM. 

"By faith Abraham, when he was called . . . went 
out, not knowing whither he went . . . for he 
looked for a city which hath foundations, whose 
builder and maker is God." Heb. xi, 8, 10. 

** Our Friend, our Brother, and our Lord, 
What may thy service be ? — 
Nor name, nor form, nor ritual word, 
But simply following Thee." 

— Whittier. 

The narratives of the life of Abraham 
are somewhat puzzling to the archaeologist 
and the historical student. The reason for 
this is that while Ur of the Chaldees has 
been identified, and some discoveries made 
there, and while many documents have 
been found which bear upon the general 
period of Abraham, these documents not 
only do not mention Abraham himself, but 
raise some knotty questions concerning the 
historical period in which the Bible places 
him. Others! have discussed these problems 



^ For discussions of these see the articles " Abraham " in Hasting's 
Dictionary of the Bible, VoQ Encyclopedia Biblica, and the Jewish 
Encyclopedia. Also ch. iii, of Paton's Early History of Syria 
and Palestine. ^ 

107 



108 THE CALL OF ABRAHAM 

however, and in this little study we turn 
to a pleasanter task. 

No narrative in the Old Testament more 
strongly portrays in parable the high quali- 
ties and noble career of the idealist and the 
spiritual mystic than does this story of Abra- 
ham. He saw the vision of God, he heard 
the divine call to leave the rich valley of 
the Euphrates for a far-off land, and he 
obeyed. In that land he was a wanderer ; 
for years the hope with which he started out, 
— the hope of founding an ideal state, — found 
in the outward circumstances of his life no 
objective support. Nevertheless he still held 
his faith, and pursued undaunted his high 
purpose. This picture is attractively pre- 
sented, notwithstanding the fact, that there 
is here and there a crude moral touch, which 
partakes of the nature of the age in which 
the narrators of the story lived. ^ 

The call of God comes to all. To the 
heart which has not yet found God, and 
which is tempted to live in accordance with 
the ideals of selfishness and expediency, the 



^ Such, for example, as Abraham's denial of Sarah. Gen. xii, 12, 
13, and xx, 2. 



THE CALL OF ABRAHAM 109 

call comes in the form of a summons to find 
its satisfaction and its home in the Father's 
love, and its rule of life in the pure exam- 
ple of Jesus Christ. Born in an animal body 
and reared in a selfish world, such a call 
seems to the natural man a summons to an 
unknown country, — a great leap of faith. 
Peace can, however, come in no other way 
than by obedience. The heart will never 
rest except in the Father's service. Outward 
prosperity may not come to the obedient; 
he may, like Abraham, be all his life a pil- 
grim and a sojourner ; and yet the future is 
his; he is building in the ''city which hath 
foundations." 

Often the call to enter upon some self- 
sacrificing service for others, comes to hearts 
already possessed of God's peace. It means 
hardship, but it portends blessing to others. 
Such are the calls which have come in every 
age to the prophets, the reformers, and the 
missionaries. The illumination of a dark 
continent, the uplifting of the down-trod- 
den, or the prosperity of generations yet 
unborn, depend upon the response which 
a few individuals give to such calls. 



110 THE CALL OF ABKAHAM 

Obedience involves the leaving of home, or 
friends, or ease, or the esteem of contempora- 
ries, bat it also means fellowship with God 
in labor, and the founding of some new gate 
into the holy city. Similar calls to similar, 
though less conspicuous, service come to us 
all. How seldom we are faithful as was 
Abraham ! 

There are periods when the divine call 
comes to all men to move from the old 
regions of their thought and beliefs into 
new intellectual worlds. Such a period 
came to Europe at the time of the Renais- 
sance and the Reformation, and another has 
come to the modern w^orld within the past 
century. We have been called upon to 
leave the old intellectual paths which had 
grown familiar to our ancestors, and had 
been hallowed to us by the footsteps of many 
whom we loved and revered, and to go out, 
not knowing whither we should be led. 
Many have hesitated ; many have gone 
unwillingly ; some have refused to go at 
all. A few, with Abraham's faith and with 
the spirits of prophets have gone with trust- 
ful and buoyant hearts, confident that God 



THE CALL OF ABRAHAM 111 

was thus leading to a better intellectual and 
spiritual future. The next generation will 
recognize their moral heroism. 

As we near life's boundary, — and it is 
often much nearer than we think, — the 
summons comes to us all to go out into the 
great unknown country of the other life. 
Can we go calmly and trustfully, confident 
of the Father's goodness? The spiritual 
children of Abraham are able to sing with 
Whittier : 

" I know not where His islands lift 
Their fronded palms in air ; 
I only know I cannot drift 
Beyond His love and care." 



CHAPTER XXIII 
JACOB AT BETHEL. 

"Surely Jehovah is in this place; and I knew it 
not." Gen. xxviii, 16. 

' ' Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
Shades of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing Boy, 
But he beholds the light, and whence it flows, 

He sees it in his joy ; 
The Youth, who daily farther from the east 

Must travel, still is Nature's Priest, 

And by the vision splendid 

Is on his way attended ; 
At length the Man perceives it die away, 
And fade into the light of common day." 

— Wordsworth. 

Of all the characters in the Old Testa- 
ment Jacob is the most human, and is most 
humanly pictured.^ Many features of his 
portrait are such as to delight the Oriental 
mind both in ancient and in modern times. 
He was rightly named the ''Supplanter.^' 
Cool, self- controlled, and wily, he pushed 
his way, snatching by trickery that which 



^ For critical and historical discussions, see the articles "Jacob" 
in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible, and in the Encyclopedia 
Biblica. 

112 



JACOB AT BETHEL 113 

birth and natural advantages had given to 
another. Though uniformly successful in 
his strategy, like all such characters he 
attracted the hatred of his victim, and 
that hatred endangered Jacob's life. In the 
opening years of his dawning manhood this 
pushing trickster was therefore obliged to 
flee from home and go out into the world to 
seek his fortune. Alone and defenceless, 
harried by the pangs of an evil conscience, 
but also filled with the light heart and high 
hopes of youth, which did not fully per- 
ceive all the consequences of his double 
dealing, Jacob, we are told, camped for the 
night at Bethel. 

Now the Hebrews, like the ancient Semites 
in general, 1 did not understand the omni- 
presence of God as we do, but thought that 
He dwelt in certain places, and manifested 
Himself most remarkably there. In accord- 
ance with this idea, an old law ^ provides 
that in every place where God manifested 
Himself an altar for his w^orship might be 
erected. The thought, which underlies the 



* See W. Eobertson Smith's Religion of the Semites, 115 ff., and 
the writer's Semitic Origins, p. 96, and 112. ^ See Exodus xx, 24-26. 



114 JACOB AT BETHEL 

law, is that man does not know all the 
places where God dwells, and that it is right 
for him when new knowledge comes to him, 
to recognize it by a permanent religious 
organization. 

Jacob, as he lay down that night, dreamed 
a dream. Heaven seemed to be open above 
him, the angels of God were ascending 
and descending on a ladder. At the top 
Jehovah Himself appeared and seemed to 
promise to Jacob and his posterity a noble 
and glorious future. In the morning Jacob 
awoke deeply impressed. Feelings of awe 
filled his breast. '' Jehovah is in this place,'' 
he exclaimed, "and I knew it not. How 
terrible is this place ! this is none other than 
the house of God, and this is the gate of 
heaven." ^ He was impressed and accord- 
ingly vowed a vow, or made a covenant 
with his God ; but his old habit of thought 
asserted itself, and his covenant was a selfish 
bargain. '^If God will be with me, and 
will keep me in this way that I go, and 
will give me bread to eat, and raiment to 
put on, so that I come again to my Father's 

* Accordingly, in later time, Bethel was a sanctuary. 



JACOB AT BETHEL 115 

house in peace, then Jehovah shall be my 
God." He had had his heavenly vision, 
and it had stirred his heart, but he was not 
ready to surrender to his God unless he 
could gain some material advantage by 
doing so. 

We often judge Jacob too severely, forget- 
ting to make allowance for the crude and 
this-worldly standards of the age from which 
this story comes. We ought, however, to 
judge ourselves through it, for it is an 
admirable parable of the experience of many 
a young man. He is a child of prayer and 
of promise. Heaven lies about him in his 
infancy. As he grows, cupidity, avarice, 
and ambition tempt him. He finds that 
the world has praise only for success and 
possessions, and, with moral distinctions 
confused, he rushes after these regardless of 
the means by which they are to be attained 
or the consequences of the pursuit. Long 
is he attended on his way by visions splendid, 
but he does not abandon his strife for the 
earthly and the material things of life. In 
some great crisis a supreme vision comes, 
bringing a message which he cannot mistake. 



116 JACOB AT BETHEL 

but if he heeds at all, it is, like Jacob, 
in a bargain which stipulates that earthly 
prosperity shall be the condition on which 
the homage of his soul shall rise to God. 
This is the spiritual biography of many a 
man. No wonder that 

" The man perceives it die away, 
And melt into the light of common day." 

Happy are such as have Jocob's later 
experience and become at last princes with 
God! 



CHAPTEE XXIV. 
HOW JACOB BECAME ISRAEL. 

"I will not let thee go, except thou' bless me. Gen. 
xxxii, 26. 

" 111 that He blesses is our good, 
And unblest good is ill ; 
And all is right that seems most wrong. 
If it be His sweet will." 

— Fader. 

Another picture in the life of Jacob por- 
trays him somewhat more attractively. He 
had spent his years in Aram, his family was 
about him, he had acquired wealth, and was 
on his way back to his native land. His 
departure from Aram was signalized by 
trickery similar to that, the consequences of 
which had originally driven him from 
Canaan. At last his peace was made with 
Laban, his family and his flocks had passed 
on before, and he was spending the night 
alone. To-morrow he must meet the brother 
whom years before he had so deeply wronged. 
What will the greeting be ? How will Esau 
receive him? As he thought on this with 
some foreboding a man attacked him in the 

117 



118 HOW JACOB BECAME ISRAEL 

darkness, with whom he wrestled long. In 
the wrestling Jacob was finally hurt, so that 
he could do little but cling, but, as the night 
passed, he became convinced that his hurter 
was more than human, and declared to him, 
'* I will not let thee go, except thou bless 
me." To this resolution he clung until the 
blessing was obtained, and as morning 
dawned his old nature vanished. He was 
no longer Jacob, the " Supplanter/' but 
Israel, ^' a Prince with God." In the light 
of the next day, as he passed over the trans- 
Jordanic hills, we are told that he named 
the place Peniel, or '' Presence of God," be- 
cause there he had come face to face with 
his Maker. This tradition is, as Dr. Gannett 
has pointed out,i a parable of many a life. 
We are all born with the nature of the sup- 
planter within us. Like Jacob, we spend 
much of our lives living it out. Like him, 
too, we find much in life to hurt us, — much 
to wrestle with ; and often, like him, we 
wrestle long in darkness and cheerless night. 
One class of the things with which we 
wrestle consists of inherited tendencies and 



* See his eermon, IVrestling and Blessing. 



HOW JACOB BECAME ISRAEL 119 

limitations. We do not choose our parent- 
age ; we are born into circumstances over 
which we have no control. The powers, 
the nature, or the poverty, which we inherit, 
painfully limit our success. Many a one 
patiently pushes on in the darkness of a 
hopeless struggle, outstripped by those who 
have a more fortunate inheritance than he. 
But these very limitations may become a 
blessing. Not to supplant others in the 
strife after earthly position or possessions^ 
but to gain the spiritual power to turn the 
limitations, which defeat, into the instru- 
ments of heavenly blessing, makes one a 
prince with God. Limitations are often the 
conditions of the birth of character. To 
recognize these conditions, and to seek the 
divine blessing from them, is to turn the 
painful night of wrestling into the bright 
morning of Peniel. 

At times there come into life experiences 
which render the whole world dark. Some 
overwhelming calamity brings to the heart 
a darkness which may be felt ; some crush- 
ing bereavement gives it a pain that seems 
unbearable. Life seemed to be made for 



120 HOW JACOB BECAME ISRAEL 

love, and, that the loved one should be 

snatched from our embrace, appears to be an 

irreparable and an inexplicable calamity. 

If the meaning of it, and the blessing in it, 

be sought, even such an experience will 

prove a source of blessing. Love, which 

simply dotes and enjoys, has never sounded 

the profound depths of loving ; it plays 

upon the surface. 

* ' The heart must bleed before it feels, 
The pool be troubled before it heals," 

and as the sorrow is seen to be God's will 
and is accepted as such, the lineaments of 
the Father's face begin to shine through the 
darkness, the Father's peace spreads over 
the heart, and the life, though scarred and 
maimed, enters upon a new plane of happi- 
ness and felicity on the plains of Peniel. 
Often in the present age our hurter comes 
in the form of a hard despair, which arises 
in our night of doubt. Old conceptions of 
how God created the world have been taken 
away ; our former conception of how He 
caused the Bible to be written is snatched 
^from us; or some other cause compels a 
growing mind to abandon something of its 



HOW JACOB BECAME ISRAEL 121 

childhood's faith, and, in the darkness which 
succeeds, that soul seems to be maimed for 
life. Not so need it be. Even doubt may 
be but the gateway to larger faith. If the 
spirit, which animated Jacob in his night of 
wrestling but animate us, and we seek the 
meaning of the painful experience, we shall 
find that that, which seems to be aimed at 
the symmetry, if not the life of our faith, 
will, when manfully faced and struggled 
with, lead to better faith, to loftier spiritu- 
ality, and to clearer vision of God. 

The lesson of this story of Jacob is, then, to 
bear manfully life's limitations and hard- 
ships, to seek their divine meaning, to com- 
mune with God in the midst of them, and 
thus in character and bearing to become 
God's prince. At the centre of the universe 
beats a Heart of Love. The blows, which 
fall upon us in life, are those by which He 
would chisel our characters into His own 
image. 



CHAPTER XXV, 

JOSEPH. 

** They forced his feet into fetters. Into iron came 
his soul." Ps. cv, 13. 

" O Will, that wiliest good alone, 

Lead Thou the way, Thou guidest best ; 
A silent child, I follow on, 

And trusting lean upon Thy breast. 
And if in gloom I see Thee not, 

I lean upon Thy love unknown ; 
In me Thy blessed will is wrought, 
If I will nothing of my own." 

— Tersteegen. 

Among the stories of the patriarchs that 
of Joseph ^ exemplifies silent, unselfish suf- 
fering for others. As a youth the unmerited 
envy of his brethren secured his expatria- 
tion and enslavement ; as a slave, faithful 
in all things to his master's interests, the 
unholy love and the heartless accusations of 
his mistress accomplished his imprisonment ; 
as a prisoner he was forgotten by one whom 
he had cheered and helped, and so was left 
to languish in fetters for weary months. But 



1 For critical and historical discussions of the Joseph narratives 
see the articles " Joseph" in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible and 
the Encyclopedia Biblica, 

122 



JOSEPH 123 

his spirit kept sweet and true, and the time 
came at last when the great work, for which 
all these years of endurance had been pre- 
paring him, was ready for his guiding hand, 
and then his hand and head and heart were 
found ready for his lofty task. 

The story of Joseph is first of all a para- 
ble of the way to bear adversity. Trouble 
often comes upon us through our own 
incompetence or negligence ; of such trou- 
bles we have no right to complain. But in 
this world the faithful heart, the unselfish 
spirit, and the sweet-tempered life are no 
guarantee against adversity. Slander, envy, 
and self-seeking will surge around such a 
life and will give it keenest pain. So ac- 
cording to the accounts in Genesis, was it 
with Joseph. As the Psalm forcibly puts 
it, '* into iron came his soul/' i a phrase 
which is strikingly like ours : ^' the iron 
entered his soul." It suggests to the Eng- 
lish reader the keenness of the sufferings of a 
sensitive spirit, its gloom, and its temptations 
to despair. Joseph is pictured as bearing 



» The English suggests this more strongly than the Hebrew. In the 
latter language the word for "soul" is used in the sense of" self.' 



124 JOSEPH 

all most heroically and with undaunted 
faith. He was always cheerful, and always 
ready to be of service to those about him. 
In the end, too, it appeared to all that these 
sufferings had been, in the ordering of a 
wise Providence, the preparation of the man 
for a high destiny, and for a lofty service to 
two important nations. Without the chain 
of misfortunes he would neither have been 
at the point where he could be of service, 
nor qualified by experience to undertake his 
gigantic labors. 

As the foundations of a lofty building 
must be laid far under the ground, so the 
preparation for the noblest work of man 
must be laid in humbling and painful expe- 
riences. Happy those who learn with Paul 
to rejoice in tribulation, that thus they may 
learn to comfort others with the comfort 
with which they themselves have been com- 
forted of God. 1 

In the character of Joseph, too, we have 
pictured many of those traits which shine 
out so brilliantly in Jesus Christ. Truly 
Joseph may be said to be a type of Christ 

1 See 2 Cor. i, 4. 



JOSEPH 125 

The Master's purity and unselfishness, His 
readiness to serve, the envy and hatred which 
burned in the hearts of those who should 
have welcomed Him and which hounded 
Him to His death. His uniform kindliness 
even to His enemies, and His conquest of 
those enemies by the power of love, — all 
find exemplification in the Old Testament 
picture of Joseph. Though these awaited 
their full manifestation till the coming of 
the Son of Man, the story of the life of 
Joseph, fondly repeated or read from gener- 
ation to generation, was preparing the world 
for His advent, and for His matchless work. 



iCHAPTER XXVI. 

MOSES. 

" Moses . . . refused to be called the son of Pha- 
raoh's daughter, choosing rather to share ill treat- 
ment with the people of God, than to enjoy the 
pleasures of sin for a season." Heb. xi, 24, 25. 

" Faith's meanest deed more favor bears 
Where hearts and wills are weighed, 
Than brightest transports, choicest prayers, 
Which bloom their hour and fade." 

—J. H. Newman. 

The life of Moses as portrayed in the Old 
Testament ^ presents some important paral- 
lels to the life of Joseph, and affords similar 
suggestions ; but it has also important feat- 
ures of its own. Moses, like Joseph, suf- 
fered exile, but unlike Joseph his exile was 
voluntary. It is a noble thing to bear un- 
complainingly crosses which come to us un- 
bidden, but it is even nobler to deliberately 
choose the unpopular path from principle, 
knowing well the meaning of that pleasure 
and luxury upon which one turns his back. 

* For historical discussions of the work of Moses see the article 
••Moses" in Basting's Dictionary of the ^z'^/,?, Budde's Religion 
of Israel to the Exile, ch. i, and the writer's Semitic Origins, pp. 
267-296. The religious lesson of the narratiyes is quite independent 
of such discussion. 

126 



MOSES 127 

This was the merit which the author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews saw in the flight of 
Moses from Egypt, and the author of that 
Epistle was right. 

Like Joseph, Moses, we are told, spent 
years in solitude, but it was in some ways a 
less trying solitude. The open air of heaven 
and the companionship of flocks are less try- 
ing than the hard lot of the slave, or the 
stifling atmosphere of the dungeon. As 
Moses led his flocks about, he came to the 
mount where Jehovah was thought to dwell, i 
and received a revelation from Him. The ' 
highest spiritual experiences and the new 
visions of God ever come to those who, like 
Moses, turn their backs upon selfish ease, 
and take the rugged pathway of duty, even 
though that pathway leads to exile and to 
solitude. Moses's new vision of God gave 
him new hope for Israel. He saw that a 
new religion was possible for her, and that 
through the faith of that new religion a new 
national life would become hers. The vision 
burned itself upon his heart ; it amounted 
to a call to go and inaugurate the new era 

1 Compare the statement on this point in chap, xxiii. 



128 MOSES 

of which he had had a glimpse; he hesi- 
tated, but at last yielded ; and forth from 
the retirement of the wilderness came the 
diffident, but mighty champion of the op- 
pressed, the herald of a new religious era. 
The right and pure choice of Moses as a 
young man, his fidelity in solitude, the mys- 
tic unfolding of truth which came to him 
there, and his obedience to the heavenly 
vision, are all most suggestive of helpful 
guidance to those in any age who come to 
the parting of the ways in life. 

Moses mediated the covenant between 
God and Israel. That covenant was after- 
ward interpreted in different ways by differ- 
ent individuals, but the fact of the covenant 
is one of the epoch-making facts in the re- 
ligious history of the world. Next to the 
New Covenant established by Christ it has 
been most influential upon the highest des- 
tinies of man. Little did the youth who fled 
from Egypt, because he chose to share the 
ill-treatment of the people of God, dream of 
the noble mission to which the path of self- 
denial would lead. At the end of the path 
he found the privilege of talking with God 
''face to face," and of working with God to 
uplift the world for all time. The way of 



MOSES 129 

the cross still leads to mystic communion 
with God, and to similar, though perhaps 
less conspicuous service. 

Not as the mediator of a covenant only, 
but also in the manner in which he repelled 
a temptation to self-aggrandizement, ^ is 
Moses a type of Christ. In both these ways 
he is represented as exhibiting something 
of the same virtues which were so conspicu- 
ous in the Master. Once, we are told, when 
Jehovah was exceedingly angry with Israel, 
He proposed to destroy tlie people and to 
make of Moses a great nation. No passage 
in the Old Testament breathes a more beau- 
tiful spirit than the intercessory prayer, 
in which Moses pleaded for the pardon of the 
offenders. He could not bear to think of 
the destruction of those for whom he had 
labored, notwithstanding their ingratitude 
and rebellion, even when that destruction 
meant his own aggrandizement. It is 
through such spirits as these that God is 
revealed to the world. Christ is the Chief 
and the Master of them all, but of that num- 
ber we may be, if we will. 



^ Tke analogy suggested is with Christ's temptation to secure ftU 
the kingdom* of the world. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA. 

" I will sing unto Jehovah for He hath triumphed 

gloriously : 
The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the 

sea." Exodus xv, 1. 

* • The sea saw it, and fled ; 
The Jordan was driven back. 
The mountains skipped like rams, 
The little hills like lambs." 

— Ps. cxiv, J, 4. 

The exodus from Egypt was the first 
great deliverance which Jehovah wrought 
for Israel. It was a deliverance of such a 
vital character, and was so signally accom- 
plished, that it was ever treasured in the 
memory of the nation. It was more than a 
turning point in their history ; it was a per- 
petual monument of the power and the 
goodness of their God, and, as centuries 
passed and national misfortunes multiplied, 
the memory of the people turned to this 
great event with ever increasing wonder 
and thanksgiving. Psalmists celebrated 
it,^ and the collectors of tradition fondly 
preserved its memory. 



»See Psalms Ixvi, 6 ; Ixxviii, 53 ; cxir, 3, 4. 
130 



THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA 131 

Three different traditions of it are now 
woven together in the fourteenth chapter of 
our book of Exodus.^ In the oldest and 
most accurate of these, there is a remark- 
able conception of nature, and of Jehovah's 
relation to nature, which not only explains 
the event itself, but points an important 
lesson to the men of the present generation. 
This writer tells us that '' Jehovah caused 
the sea to go back by a strong east wind all 
that night, and made the sea dry land/'^ 
Their God controlled the winds, through 
those He controlled the sea, and made a 
way of escape for His despairing people. 

Later poets connected this event w4th the 
crossing of the Jordan, because of the simil- 
arity of the two occurrences, and sang of 
them together. It is probable that the 
stopping of the waters of the Jordan was due 
to a landslide such as the Arabs tell us, 
occurred in the year 1266 A. D., which 
stopped the water and gave them an oppor- 
tunity to build a bridge. The river was at 
flood and the high water had rendered their 



^See Carpenter and Harford-Battersby's Hexaieuch, Vol. II, p. 
100 ff., and Bacon's Triple Tradition of the Exodus, pp. 71-72. 
»Exodu» xiv, 21. 



132 THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA 

work impossible. 1 Such an event, like the 
driving back of the water by the wind, would 
seem to the Hebrews an interposition of 
their God. They saw God in everything. 
No opportune event, they thought, could 
aid His people without His will, and in this 
they were right. His wind had driven back 
the Ked Sea for their deliverance ; He had 
stopped the waters of the Jordan that they 
might enter into the land of promise. It is 
little wonder that in the later generations 
the agencies which He had employed were 
forgotten, or were believed to have been 
priestly implements. The fact of His de- 
liverance was, nevertheless, most gratefully 
remembered. 

" What ailed thee, O thou sea, that thou fleetest? 
Thou Jordan, that thou turnedst back?" 

gleefully exclaimed the psalmist, confident 

that but one answer could be given : " God 

was aiding His chosen ones." 

The suggestions of these Old Testament 

narratives are obvious. God, our Father, 

controls His world ; we are His children. 

Life is a continuous miracle. Though we 

*See the Arabic text and translation in the Palestine Exploration 
Fund'i Quarterly Statement, for July 1895, pp. 253-261. 



THE PASSAGE OF THE RED SEA 133 

live in an age when the processes of nature 
are understood as never before, these pro- 
cesses are but God's way of working. No 
complex accumulation of difficulties can 
surround us, except by His will or permis- 
sion ; no pain can come to us without Him, 
even through the agency of one of His rebel- 
lious children ; we should accept all as His 
ordering, look for the lesson He would teach 
us in it, and await the deliverance which 
He wills, whether it be the deliverance of 
relief from suffering, or the impartation of 
strength to endure. " Heaviness may en- 
dure for a night, but joy will come in the 
morning." As our difficulties disappear 
and the goodness of God brings joy to the 
heart, we shall be able to join in Miriam's 
pean of triumph : 

" I will sing unto Jehovah for He hath triumphed 

gloriously : 
The horse and his rider He hath thrown into the 

sea." 

If, as our Christian experience advances, 
the deliverance be, like the crossing of the 
Jordan, not so much relief from danger as 
the gift of liberty to labor or to enter into a 
fuller life, the thanksgiving will be as spon- 
taneous and the joy as real. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

JOSHUA. 

" Only be strong and very courageous." Joshua i, 7. 

*' Foremost captain of his time, 
Rich in saving common sense, 
And, as the greatest only are, 
In his simplicity sublime." 

— Tennyson. 

The character and career of Joshua, as 
they are pictured to us in the Old Testa- 
ment, ^ give forcible expression to the dig- 
nity of simple manhood and the dynamic 
force of faith and courage. From the time 
when he appears in the narrative as Israel's 
captain and Moses' minister, up to the final 
farewell, when, having as we are told ^ con- 
quered the land for Israel, he laid down the 
burdens of life, having pledged his house to 
serve the Lord, the dominant note of his 
career was faith, and its prevailing atmos- 
phere the courage which springs from faith. 
As a spy, he believed that Israel could take 



^ For critical and historical discussions see the articles " Joshua " 
in Hastings's Dictionary of the Bible and the Encyclopedia 
Biblica. ' Judges I gives a different account of the conquest 
which does not attribute it to Joshua. 

134 



JOSHUA 136 

the land ; as a general, his courageous strat- 
egy made the conquest of impregnable for- 
tresses like Jericho ^ and Ai possible even 
by his smaller forces ; as a moral leader, he 
would yield to no temptations to gain illicit 
wealth ; as an impartial ruler, he is repre- 
sented as justly dividing the land. 

The life of faith and courage was not, 
however, necessarily free from error. What 
life is ? Acting too hastily he made his 
league with the Gibeonites, ^ — an act which, 
we are told, long crippled his people. One or 
two mistakes cannot ruin a life of faith. If 
the persistent attitude of the heart is right, 
and its needle points faithfully to the polestar 
of the moral and spiritual world, its victo- 
ries are sure. So it was with Joshua. An old 
Hebrew poet, a bit of whose song was copied 
from the lost book of Jashar into our book 
of Joshua, so strongly believed that heaven 
itself was interested in the struggles of this 
noble, manly life, that he represents in poet- 
ical hyperbole the sun as standing still to 
watch and aid his victories, for he sings : 

^ The oldest narrative, which is now embedded in Joshua vi, so 
represents it. See Carpenter and Harford-Battersby's Hexateuch. 
Vol, II, pp. 328-330, and Joshua in the Polychrome Bible, pp. 8, 9, 
> See Joshua ix. 3 ff. 



136 JOSHUA 

"And the sun stood still, and the moon stayed.^" 

The conquest which Joshua made is 
suggestive of that which may be made by 
every man of faith. Life lies before him 
as a promised land. Its physical frame and 
earthly environment are the rich valleys 
which are capable of bearing plentiful har- 
vests ; its mental and moral powers the 
mountain peaks which are capable of bear- 
ing upon their sides the exhilarating vine, 
and of affording from their summits broad 
prospects and inspiring visions. These are 
at the beginning of life under the sway of 
the selfish propensities inherited from the 
past and bound up in the bodily frame. 
The work of life consists in bringing this 
land of promise into subjection to the High- 
est, so that the harvests of its valleys and 
the inspiring vintage of its hills shall sup- 
port the unselfish life of the ideal Christian 
disciple. At times it is an arduous work. 
The enemy often seems to have all the ad- 
vantage ; but faith, courage, and persistence 
in the right way may bring the victory in the 
end. The conquest is not completed in a 

* See Joshua x, 13. 



JOSHUA 137 

moment ; it is the work of years. Here 
and there in life's mazes one makes an alli- 
ance with an appetite or a propensity to 
which he should give no quarter ; but if the 
heart is right, such errors will be ascertained 
and corrected. " If in any respect you take 
a mistaken view, God will make that also 
plain to you. Only we must order our lives 
by the standard which we have already 
reached." ^ The Father in heaven watches 
over such a life and will faithfully reward 
its faith and courage. Its victory is sure. 



1 Phil, iii, 15, 16, as rendered in i\x^)Twentietk Century New Test- 
ament 



CHAPTER XXIX. 
DEBORAH. 

**I Deborah arose, 
I arose a mother in Israel." 

Judges V, 7. 

"Maiden, when such a soul as thine is born, 
The morning stars their ancient music make." 

— LowelL 

The poem which constitutes the fifth 
chapter of the book of Judges is thought by- 
many to be the oldest poem in our Bibles. 
It is one of the purest and strongest bits of 
Hebrew verse. It is the poem of women. It 
celebrates a victory accomplished by women, 
and toward the end pathetically pictures the 
sorrows of a woman. Deborah inspired 
Israel's general ; it was her prophetic voice 
which called the disunited tribes together, 
and welded them into an effective force. It 
was Jael who, when the hated oppressor fled 
from the victorious army, delivered her peo- 
ple by taking his life. It was a hard and 
savage deed, but we must not forget that it 
was a hard and savage age. It was a deed 
which appealed to her compatriots, and 

138 



DEBOKAH 139 

secured for her a place in this immortal 
song. When all was over and the poet had 
told his tale, it was to the mother of Sisera 
that the reader's thought was directed. As 
women were the inspiration and the 
achievers of the action, so its blow fell 
heaviest on a woman. 

This poem records an incident in an 
epoch when Semitic women held an impor- 
tant place in the social and political econ- 
omy of the time.^ From that place the social 
forces which made polygamy possible thrust 
woman so long ago, that it is hard for us to 
realize that she ever held it, and yet it is 
true. The civilization of that time was 
crude, and the women which it produced, 
like the men of their time, would not appear 
attractive to-day, but, like so many of the 
institutions of that early age, the position 
accorded to women then was in germ a 
promise of the destiny to which Christian 
civilization would call them. 

The place given to women in the friend- 
ships of Christ, and the part accorded them 
as the first heralds of the resurrection, have 

* See the writer's Semitic Origins, pp. 53-57, 



140 DEBORAH 

often been noted. The spirit and genius of 
Christianity as well as the action of the 
Master gave them an equal place with their 
brethren. Paul declared that sex has no 
place in Christianity, ^ and tacitly took it for 
granted that women had the same gifts for 
spiritual service as men.^ The effort of one 
of his followers to prevent untrained women 
from making undignified interruptions of 
the religious exercises of the church,^ were 
afterwards misinterpreted so as to deprive 
them of all right to public service. 

The Society of Friends were the first to 
return to the Christian basis of equality in 
all things. With them women have for two 
hundred and fifty years enjoyed the same 
spiritual privileges, and engaged in the same 
spiritual duties as men. Their ministry has 
gained thereby, and into their religious life 
there has come a strain of purity, tenderness, 
and of lofty spirituality, which otherwise 
would have been impossible. Others are now 
realizing the justice of this, and are gradu- 
ally striving to accomplish in the life of their 



1 Gal. iii, 28. ' 1 Cor. xi, 1-16 ^ 1 Tim. ii, 1-15. The opinion is 
now prevailing that Paul did not write this epistle. 



DEBORAH 141 

organized Christianity this simple Christian 
justice. 

It may seem strange in this age of the 
'' emancipation of woman " to call attention 
to these things, for there are those who fear 
that we are returning to the unwomanly 
type of women of the days of Semitic an- 
tiquity, rather than approaching the realiza- 
tion of the ideal society of which that 
antiquity was a prophecy in germ. Such a 
result we need not fear. 

Woman, freed from the trammels of igno- 
rance and the limitations of artificial reli- 
gious restraints, will bring to the civiliza- 
tion of the future the power to inspire and 
to achieve which Deborah and Jael exhib- 
ited, at the same time that she forms the 
centre and heart of the home and feels, as 
she always has done, like the mother of 
Sisera, the keenest of the family's sorrows. 

Who that has been helped in his faith by 
the sympathy and insight of a Christian 
woman, or that has shared the comrade- 
ship of a noble wife, or had occasion to 
treasure the memory of a sainted mother, 
could fail to rejoice at the coming of that 
time when every woman should be a 
"mother in Israel?" 



CHAPTER XXX. 



GIDEON. 



" How should one chase a thousand, 
And two put ten thousand to flight ?" 

Deut. xxxii,36. 

" To do is to succeed — our fight 

Is waged in Heaven's approving sight — 

The smile of God is victory." 

— Whittier. 

The story of Gideon is a good example of 
the victories which may, with the divine 
blessing, be won by insignificant instru- 
ments. Gideon belonged to one of the lesser 
tribes ; his clan was one of the least signifi- 
cant in the tribe ; he the least of his family. 
In hordes the Midianites were pouring down 
on the land ; the force which Gideon could 
muster against thern was comparatively 
small ; but with faith and courage combined 
with consecrated skill he won, even with 
this force., a victory which set his people 
free from the marauding invaders. 

Indeed, this lesson was so impressed upon 
Israel in later times that some of the tra- 
ditions concerning the matter represented 
142 



GIDEON 143 

Gideon's army as having been artificially 
reduced so as to purposely make it small. 
This shows that, to the ancient Hebrews as 
to us, the religious point of the story was 
that, where there resides in human breasts 
a high courage born of faith, God can do 
great things with feeble instruments or with 
obscure persons. 

The victory won by Gideon was so notable 
that it was long remembered as a day of 
marvellous slaughter of Israel's enemies. 
Isaiah twice refers to it, ^ and of it the author 
of the eighty-third psalm sang.^ Like some 
notable historic events of recent years, dif- 
ferent traditions existed concerning it, and 
different versions of its details were current. 
According to one of these ^ the slaughter 
took place on the east of the Jordan, and 
the names of the Midianite chieftains were 
Zebah and Zalmunna ; according to another 
it occurred on the west of the Jordan, and 
their names were Oreb and Zeeb. * Although 
the traditions varied, and though in later 
times its salient points were somewhat 

*Isa. ix, 4 and x, 26. =»Ps Ixxxiii, 11. ^ji^jges viii, 4-9. * Judges 
▼ii, 22-35. See Moore's Judges in the Polychrome Bible, and his 
Judges in International Crit. Com. pp. 204-223. 



144 GIDEON 

heightened, the event itself is one of the 
sure events of Israelitish history, and the 
lesson pointed by it has been recognized 
from the earliest times. 

Visions of God come to all. They come 
m the form of illuminations of conscience, 
calling to victory over some little sin or 
weakness and pointing out the way to a 
strong and noble life ; they come in the 
form of impulses to generous helpfulness to 
others, indicating the way to a life of benefi- 
cent service. The private sin which is 
thus condemned, or the service for others 
which is made possible, often seems so small 
that it does not seem worth while to apply 
ourselves to it^ and thus the opportunity for 
blessing passes. Often, too, the noble life 
and the helpful service seem utterly beyond 
us. So conscious of our weakness are we 
that either to be or to do that which the 
vision calls for is, we are sure, a task too 
arduous. The story of Gideon is an his- 
torical parable summoning us to faithful 
endeavor with surety of victory. The great 
heroes of faith — Paul, Martin Luther, George 
Fox, Abraham Lincoln, and many others — 



GIDEON 145 

were simple men ; they had strong faith in 
God and courage to do the next duty, so like 
Gideon they put to flight the hosts of dark- 
ness. Such is the work which will ever be 
accomplished by those of like faith. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 

SAMSON. 

** The child shall be a Nazarite unto God." 
Judges xiii, 7. 

" O dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon, 
Irrevocably dark, total eclipse 
Without all hope of day ! 
O first created beam, and thou great Word, 
Let there be light, and hght was over all ; 
Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree? " 

—Milton. 

To the devotional student no character is 
more puzzling than Samson. One is tempted 
to wonder why he is in the Bible. He was 
apparently without religious sensibilities as 
we understand them, and, as Professor Toy 
has said, he was a moral idiot. Some have 
doubted his historical character and endeav- 
ored to regard him as a sun-myth. ^ There 
can be little doubt that there was such a 
person as Samson, though it may be that be- 
fore the stories concerning him were written 
down they had acquired some additional 
elements in passing from mouth to mouth. 

* See the discussion in 'HLoonf^ Judges in Inter .Crit, Com., pp 
364, 865. 

146 



SAMSON 147 

Deeper reflection soon discovers that the 
story of Samson is a parable of the way in 
which the noblest opportunities of birth and 
the largest endowment of personal power 
may be prostituted, and how accordingly a 
life which begins with the fairest prospects 
may end in the deepest gloom. The age in 
which the life of Samson was lived was one 
of the darkest and least civilized in the his- 
tory of Israel. The story of his life partakes 
of the rough and unmoral character of the 
times. Some of its features, too, which 
seem to us immoral are but parts of a once 
extensive,^ but now obsolete, social order. 
But in the light of whatever age we look 
upon Samson, he holds before us a warn- 
ing as an impressive example of the dark 
end which awaits those who devote to sel- 
fish ends bright talents and golden oppor- 
tunities. Endowed beyond his fellows with 
all that his age considered desirable, he 
devoted his life to the pleasures of appetite 
and passion. Those pleasures led then, as 
now, to slavery and to blindness. Milton 
makes Samson describe most accurately the 

* S««th« writer'i Semitic Origins, ch. ii, ©sp.,p.56. 



148 SAMSON 

moral condition which comes from such a 
course : 

" Myself my sepulchre, a moving grave." 

Such was the end of this marvellously 
gifted man. Angelic words had heralded 
his birth and pointed to a high destiny for 
him. He had been the recipient, as his 
compatriots believed, of a genuine inspira- 
tion of the spirit of God to enable him to 
accomplish wondrous deeds for God and for 
Israel, and yet his end found him : 

" Eyeless in Gaza at the mill with slaves," 

Two sayings of the apostle Paul are point- 
edly illustrated by his fate : " If ye live 
after the flesh, ye shall die," and " Let him 
that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he 
fall." 



CHAPTER XXXII. 
SAMUEL. 

" A little child shall lead them." Isaiah xi, 6. 

Ah ! well may sages bow to thee, 
Dear, loving, guileless Infancy ! 

And sigh beside their lofty lore 
For one untaught delight of thine, 

And feel they'd give their learning's store 
To know again thy truth divine." 

— Mrs. Osgood. 

The story of Samuel presents a striking 
and pleasing contrast to the story of Sam- 
son. Like Samson he was a child of prayer, 
but unlike him the promise of his birth and 
parentage ended in lights not darkness. 

Hannah, the devout mother of Samuel, 
consecrating her son to God and placing 
him in the tender years of childhood in the 
sacred precincts of the temple, is an example 
to the parents of all ages. Now that we 
realize that the temple of God is in the 
heart, it is not so easy to follow her example, 
but the great ideal for which her example 
stands should appeal strongly to every 
parent. 

149 



150 SAMUEL 

The little Samuel, too, dwelling in the 
temple of Jehovah, sleeping in its holy of 
holies,^ hearing, heeding, and obeying the 
voice of God, presents an ideal of the reli- 
gious life of the young which is not only 
attractive, but possible. 

*' Heaven lies about us in our infancy." 
The little Samuel, receiving and delivering 
his prophetic messages, brings to our 
thoughts that other, diviner boy, who re- 
minded His elders that He* must be occupied 
" in the things of His Father." ^ 

We have here not only a type of a normal 
religious childhood, but of a normal religious 
life. Jesus said : *' Except ye turn, and be- 
come as little children, ye shall in no wise 
enter into the kingdom of heaven.'' To 
have the teachable, trustful spirit of a child, 
to live with a temple of God about us, to 
hold '^ mystic, sweet communion " with 
Him, and to engage in His service, is the 
normal religious life for all. For that life 
the story of Samuel stands as an object lesson. 

*Thi8 is the real meaning of the language used. He was not in a 
tabernacle, but a temple, (1 Sam. iii, 3, R. V.), which had doora, 
(v. 15) . Samuel slept where the ark of God was. ( v. 3). That this 
was contrary to the Levitical law is true, but that law was un- 
known in the time of Samuel. ^Luke ii, 49. 



SAMUEL 151 

. That such a life is not incompatible with 
practical service to one's people and country, 
the after career of Samuel abundantly 
testifies. The model religious boy became 
the faithful judge, and the far-seeing states- 
man. On him his nation depended in the 
great crises of its fate. Though they did 
not always heed his advice, if we take liter- 
ally the accounts which have come down to 
us, his influence, nevertheless, was spread 
over them as a canopy of light, illuminating 
them, guiding them, and elevating them. 
Such holy, practical men are the hope of the 
nation, — the salt of the earth. 



CHAPTER XXXm. 

SAUL. 
"To obey is better than sacrifice." 1 Sam. xv, 22. 

'' He spoke not, but slow 
Lifted up the hand slack at his side, till he laid it 

with care 
Soft and grave, but in mild settled will, on my brow : 

through my hair 
The large fingers were pushed, and he bent back my 

head, with kind power — 
All my face back, intent to peruse it, as men do 

a flower. 
Thus held he me there with his great eyes that 

scrutinized mine — 
And oh, all my heart how it loved him ! but where 

was the sign ? 
I yearned — " Could I help thee, my father, inventing 

a bliss, 
I would add, to that life of the past, both the future 

and this ; 
I would give thee new life altogether, as good, ages 

hence 
As this moment, — had love but the warrant, love's 

heart to dispense !" 

— Robert Browning in " Saul." 

The story of Saul impresses the reader 

with the same perplexity which the fate of 

many in modern times brings to him. The 

noble young giant of his earlier days, who 

162 



SATJL 153 

could inspire his warriors and deliver the 
oppressed, — the strong statesman-king, who 
could weld the ever disintegrating tribes of 
a Semitic federation into a united nation, 
fills us with admiration. Why, then, was 
his the dark fate which met him on Mount 
Gilboa, when, deserted by all the ordinary 
religious guides of his age, he hopelessly 
sought the shade of Samuel, the guide of his 
youth, only to receive a cheerless message 
of coming doom? Probably the real ex- 
planation is that upon which Browning has 
based the plot of his poem " Saul," i. e. Saul 
became insane. The strange moods of a 
lunatic, especially in an age when the lunatic 
was thought to be possessed of an evil 
spirit, would alienate his following and 
bring upon him his pathetic end. But even 
this is not a final explanation. ^' Why," 
we ask, '' must such things as insanity be in 
our Father's world to blight fair and noble 
lives ; " and the answer is not yet given ; we 
can only trust, believing that ''He doethall 
things well." 

Hebrew historians felt the weight of this 
problem too. It seemed necessary to them 



164 SAUL 

that this mystery of the life of Saul should 
be explained. One of their number, — a 
man endued with the prophetic spirit, — 
found the explanation in Saul's disobedience. 
A tradition had come down to him, that 
Saul had not fully obeyed the divine direc- 
tions in his war with Amalek, and that he 
had thought, as so many others have done 
since, to buy off God by sacrifice. The 
reply of Samuel, which this tradition con- 
tained, '' To obey is better than sacrifice," 
deserves to ring through the centuries. The 
sin attaching to ill-gotten gain is not atoned 
by endowing churches or colleges, nor the 
mockery of a selfish, worldly life, by osten- 
tatious devotion to elaborate ritual. The 
blessings of the Master, and the knowledge 
of His mysteries are opened only to those 
who " do His will," while those who ** obey 
not the Son shall not see life." 

Browning, in his beautiful poem, imagin- 
atively pictures the love which David felt 
for Saul, and hints that even love has its 
limits of blessing. God seeks to redeem the 
world by revealing to it His love. That 
love, as manifested in Christ, reaches and 



SAUL 155 

changes all who really appreciate it. For 
those who are insensible to its real purposes, 
as the insane Saul was insensible to the pur- 
poses of David, love, — even God's love, — 
can do nothing. This is blasphemy against 
the Holy Spirit, — the one unpardonable 
sin, — to be insensate to the power of love 
and light. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 

JONATHAN. 

" Thy love to me was wonderful, 
Passing the love of women," 

2 Sam. i, 25. 

'* Angels from friendship gather half their joy." 

— Young. 

The story of the life of Jonathan, the son 
of Saul and the friend of David, is pathet- 
ically beautiful. From what is told of him 
in the Bible he appears as a fine, generous, 
brave and chivalrous spirit, upright in his 
bearing toward all, gentle and beautiful in 
character. Such a prince would seem to 
have been born for a brilliant career, but 
the melancholy fortunes of the house of Saul 
involved him also in its ruin. There is an 
indefinable and inspiring charm in his atti- 
tude toward David. Few friendships have 
been more true and strong than that of these 
two men, the one the representative of a 
waning dynasty, the other the founder of 
future power. Both were characters of the 
highest excellence that the world of that 
period knew. Such friendship can exist 
156 



JONATHAN 157 

only between noble souls. It is at once the 
finest flower of social intercourse, and one of 
the greatest forces to elevate and develop the 
spirit and character of man. 

When the divinest Being who has ever 
walked our planet wished to express the 
intimate relationship between Him and His 
disciples He said : " I have called you 
friends."! i^to the intimate relationship of 
love, of trust, and of communion He invites 
the Christian to enter. In that commun- 
ion lies our one hope of learning clearly the 
nature of God and the real meaning of life. 
The Word was not made flesh in Jesus to con- 
ceal the glory of God, but to reveal it. ^' All 
things that I have heard of my Father I have 
made known unto you," He declared ; and 
again, " I have manifested Thy name unto 
the men whom Thou gavest Me." Thus 
He offers to us all the privileges of that 
friendship which has power to unveil the 
heart of God, purify, quicken, and inspire, 
until it transforms us into the divine image. 

In lesser degree the friendships of earth's 
noble intellects, its unselfish martyr-souls 

» John xiv, 15. 



158 JONATHAN 

and saints, have the same power. They 
interpret to us the deepest in life and in God 
in so far as they have woven it into their 
thought and characters. They, in bodily 
presence, come often more sensibly near to 
us than the ascended Master, and it is a part 
of their function to interpret Him to us, as 
He interprets God. 

One denomination, the Society of Friends, 
recognizing the divine significance of friend- 
ship, when it exists on its highest level, has 
by its name consecrated itself to the service 
of this ideal. The vow of consecration has, 
perhaps, not been so well kept as it might 
have been, but it represents a noble endeavor 
to prove worthy of the friendship of the 
Highest, in purity of soul and in cleanness 
of life. 



CHAPTER XXXV. 



DAVID. 



" I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after 
mine own heart, who shall do all my will." Acts 
xiii, 22. 

** Who lends mighty aid to His King, 
Shows favor to His anointed, 
To David and to his descendants forever." 

Psalm xviiit 50 in Polychrome Bible. 

It is not easy to bring ourselves to form 
in our minds a correct picture of the his- 
torical David. His reign and his person- 
ality appeared so glorious and strong to the 
succeeding generations of reverent Israel- 
ites, that an idealizing tradition gradually 
attributed to him much which should be 
credited, as we have now learned, to the 
noble and inspired men who came after him. 
The real David we have reflected, not in the 
psalter, but in the books of Samuel.^ He 
was a man of strong character, possessed of 
a personality wonderfully attractive and in- 
spiring. True, it has some dark aspects, if 



*See the articles " David " in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible 
'blica, also "The Historical David " iu tb« 



aad the Encyclopedia Biblica 

New World, September 1895, pp. 540-560, 



159 



160 DAVID 

we judge it by the standards of our own 
time, but these grew out of the rough age 
in which he lived. They prevent us from 
regarding him as the ideal saint which tra- 
dition has delighted to paint him, but, 
unless he had so transcended his time as to 
have been quite useless in it, he could not 
have escaped such faults. Apart from these 
he was a healthy, brave, generous and at- 
tractive character. 

An Old Testament writer,^ who is quoted 
in the book of Acts, described him as ''a 
man after Jehovah's own heart," which 
meant, as the context shows, that he pos- 
sessed the necessary qualities of warrior and 
organizer to bring Israel into a position 
where she could fulfill the destiny as a 
nation, which Jehovah designed for her. It 
was not the inner qualities of heart, such as 
we now conceive that man to possess whom 
we regard as most closely representative of 
the divine purpose, but the more external 
qualities of general and king of which this 
was said. At a time when Jehovah was 
considered the God of battles the man 



n Sam. xiii, 14. 



DAVID 161 

*' after His own heart '' must naturally be a 
merciless warrior. Such a man could not 
be the author of the most spiritual psalms, 
but he could weld the disorganized Israelit- 
ish federation into a compact empire. 

This was the real work of David, and it 
was this that made him the genuine type of 
Christ. It is an historical fact that David 
made the Messianic idea possible in Israel. 
"Messiah'^ is but the Hebrew word for 
** Anointed one.'' In the early time it meant 
king, for then kings only were annointed.^ 
David completed the work of making Israel 
a nation, which was begun by Saul. He 
united the tribes ; he conquered and made 
tributary the enemies by which they had 
been surrounded ; he established an empire 
which extended from Egypt to the Eu- 
phrates, and which became in all subsequent 
generations the ideal of the Hebrew domin- 
ion. In days of national disaster, when the 
dominion of Israel had been diminished or 
destroyed, prophetic and believing hearts 
turned longingly back to the figure and the 



^See 1 Sam. xii, 3, 5; etc., and the writer's article "Anointing," 
in the Jewish Encyclopedia, and above, ch. vii. 



162 



DAVID 



reign of David, and their imaginations were 
kindled by the memory. He became the 
ideal of the Messianic king, and his king- 
dom, of the Messianic kingdom. David the 
conqueror, — the founder of an empire of the 
faithful, — is thus the physical germ, — half- 
barbarous as his rule may now seem, — from 
which our conception of Christ, the Son of 
God, the king of the truth has been gradu- 
ally made by God to grow. 

This warrior, then, who subdued and 
united Israel is the type of Him who sub- 
dues and unites our hearts. As David made 
Israel free from her oppressors, so the Christ 
makes free from old, besetting sins. As 
David made those oppressors tributary, so 
He makes tributary to the spiritual life of 
His followers those appetites and passions 
which inhere in the body, and those circum- 
stances of environment which tend to 
destroy the spiritual life. The kingdom of 
David thus becomes the type of that king- 
dom to which we all look forward, and 
which will be established when the spirit 
of Christ has permeated all so that the 
'' kingdoms of this world become the king- 
doms of our lord and of His Christ." 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 

SOLOMON. 

"Behold, the half was not told me." 1 Kings x, 7. 

'* Fell luxury ! more perilous to youth 
Than storm of quicksands, poverty or chains." 
— Hannah More. 

Solomon stands, as the Bible tells us the 
story of his life, for the enervating and 
demoralizing power of excessive luxury. He 
was a man possessed of rare natural powers, 
who in his youth felt the inspiration of high 
aspirations and noble impulses. The record 
of his choice of wisdom rather than wealth 
bespeaks for the young Solomon a rare 
spirit. Too often the glamor of wealth 
blinds the hearts of the young to the value 
of wisdom. The fame of the wisdom of Solo- 
mon, like David's fame as a warrior and 
poet, was such that in later generations it 
attracted to his name the work of many 
others ; but notwithstanding all this the life 
of Solomon does not, on the whole, stand for 
wisdom, but for the deleterious effects of 
extravagance and luxury. 

163 



164 SOLOMON 

Solomon beautified Jerusalem with mag- 
nificent buildings. His own palaces were 
the marvel of his time ; the palace of his 
Egyptian queen was gorgeous ; the temple, 
which was probably built quite as much to 
increase the splendor of his capital as to 
advance the worship of Jehovah, was be- 
lieved by later Hebrews to surpass in splen- 
dor anything the world had ever seen. The 
size of the royal harem and the extensive- 
ness of his court rivalled those of the most 
luxurious monarchs of Egypt and Babylon. 
The system of taxation necessary to support 
such extravagance became very burdensome 
to his subjects and was the direct cause of 
the disintegration of his kingdom on the 
accession of his son. 

Later generations blamed Solomon for his 
worship of foreign gods, but so far as we 
know this was not the judgment of his con- 
temporaries. We have no record that a 
prophet ever rebuked him for it, or that any 
one else found fault with him in his lifetime 
because of it. The religious conscience of 
his age seems to have detected in this no 
wrong. The time for such perception was 



SOLOMON 165 

not yet come in Israel. His age, too, gloried 
in his magnificence even while it writhed 
under his oppressive taxes, but the end of 
such extravagance and sensuality was dis- 
astrous to the character of the man, and 
destructive of the prosperity of his state. 

Herein lies the instructiveness of the ac- 
count of Solomon's life. Luxury is debas- 
ing ; extravagance is destructive of charac- 
ter ; excessive riches undermine the national 
life ; in Christian simplicity alone is the 
guarantee of individual and national pros- 
perity. There is here a warning for the pre- 
sent generation. The industrial and social 
changes which are producing so many mul- 
timillionaires need to be carefully watched, 
lest they become a social menace. As wealth 
multiplies, the spur of necessity and the 
restraints of poverty are removed from the 
children of an increasing number, and loss 
of energy and of moral fiber is almost sure 
to result. It is well to pray the prayer of 
Agur : 1 

' ' Give me neither poverty nor riches ; 
Feed me with the food that is needful for me : 



1 Prov. x:sx,8,9. 



166 SOLOMON 

Lest I be full and deny thee and say, Who is Jeho- 
vah? 
Or lest I be poor and steal 
And use profanely the name of my God." 

But wealth is sure, in our present indus- 
trial order, to come to some. A genuine 
Christianity, an earnest endeavor to keep 
before the mind the true aims and purposes 
of life, due regard to those forces which 
make for character as well as the pitfalls 
which luxury presents for its destruction, 
make it possible for these to live in Chris- 
tian simplicity, to grow in all good things, 
and to minister of their riches to the world 
as *' good stewards of the manifold grace of 
God." 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 

ELIJAH. 

** In the spirit and power of Elijah." Luke i, 17. 

" Stern Daughter of the voice of God ! 
ODuty!" 

— Wordsworth. 

In striking contrast to the luxury and 
magnificence of Solomon stands the figure 
of Elijah, the prophet of the uncultivated 
steppe. We know little of his antecedents. 
He comes suddenly to view in our Old 
Testament narratives, introduced by no bio- 
graphical sketch. Into luxury, the splendor 
and the oppression of the court and capital 
of King Ahab, who aped the magnificence 
of Tyre, the mistress of the world's com- 
merce,^ came the gaunt, unkempt figure of 
this champion of justice and of Jehovah. 
He perceived, if others had not, that the 
worship of Jehovah was incompatible with 
the worship of foreign gods ; he realized also 
that Jehovah required justice to be done 
toward all His people, and that sacred 



*See Ezekiel xxvii, and xxviii. 

167 



168 ELIJAH 

personal rights could not be violated with 
impunity even by a king. 

At the time of Elijah's appearance at least 
one foreign cult was very popular. Through 
the influence of Ahab's Tyrian wife, Jezebel, 
all the power of the court was exerted to 
make popular the worship of Baal. This 
worship was calculated to appeal strongly 
to the people because it blessed with the 
sanction of religion the most sensual passions 
of human nature. To champion single- 
handed the cause of the unpopular, ascetic, 
and rustic worship of Jehovah against the 
combined forces of royal influence and popu- 
lar approval, which supported the worship 
of Baal, required a heroism of the highest 
order. 

That Elijah possessed the requisite cour- 
age, the dramatic narrative of his struggles 
which we have in the book of Kings ^ amply 
proves, and yet even his spirit sometimes 
fainted. He knew, however, the secret of 
communion with God. He withdrew to 
Horeb, where at that period Jehovah's home 
was thought to be, and in sympathy with 

* Kings xvii-xix. 



ELIJAH 169 

the storm, the lightning and the whirlwind 
breathed out the feelings of his passionate 
heart, after which, in communion with the 
still, small voice of God, his spirit was 
cheered, his heart revived, and he himself 
prepared for new and noble work. Such 
communion and inspiration were the source 
of Elijah's success, and are open to us all. 

His insistance upon justice between man 
and man, even when the one man was a 
powerful king and the other an insignificant 
individual, gave him, notwithstanding the 
popularity of Baal-worship, a strong hold 
upon the popular heart. This insistance 
resulted from his perception of the moral 
nature of God. Most men of his time 
thought — and the idea is still in the world — 
that whatever they did God could be cajoled 
into forgiving them. Elijah understood and 
taught that righteousness and justice are the 
only conditions on which the divine blessing 
can be received. God can neither be ignored 
nor bought. 

Such a conception of God came like a 
draught of fresh air into a poison-laden 
vault. It conflicted with vested interests; 



170 ELIJAH 

it met with opposition ; its champion could 
have no easy life ; but it signified the dawn- 
ing of a new era of religion and morality in 
Israel. 

Israel herself perceived the true signifi- 
cance of Elijah's life ; she realized that in 
him a most unusual man of God had been 
in her midst. It is said that God honored 
him as he had none other, except Enoch, 
by permitting him to escape the under- 
world and by taking him directly to Him- 
self in heaven. 

The work of Elijah did not die. It was 
taken up in succeeding generations by a 
succession of prophets, as we shall see, and 
carried on to the culmination in the coming 
of the Christ. The story of Elijah's life 
illustrates what one life, even though it be 
insignificant, poor, and alone, may accom- 
plish for God and the world, if it is only 
lived in communion with God and in com- 
plete obedience to Him, — i. e. if it is lived 
" in the spirit and power of Elijah." 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

AMOS.i 

"The Lord will roar from Zion, 
And utter his voice from Jerusalem ; 
And the pastures of the shepherds shall mourn, 
And the top of Carmel shall wither." Amos i, 2. 

" It often falls, in course of common life, 
That right long time is overborne by wrong, 
Through avarice, or power, or guile, or strife, 
That weakens her, and makes her party strong ; 
But justice, though her doom she do prolong. 
Yet at the last she will her own cause right." 

— Spenser. 

The book of 2 Kings gives us but scant 
information of the reign of Jeroboam II of 
the kingdom of Israel. One would infer 
from its brief reference to Jeroboam that his 
reign was unimportant, whereas just the 
opposite appears to have been the truth. 
This impression results from the fact that it 
was unimportant from the point of view 
from which 2 Kings was written, whereas 
from the point of view of a modern student, 
who would take into account all the forces 
which enter into a great creative epoch in a 
people's life, its importance is very great. ^ 

* On Amos, see George Adam Smith's Book of the Twelve Pro- 
phets, ch. vi. >» See ch. iii. of G. A. Smith's work cited in n. 1. 

171 



172 AMOS 

It was a time of peace, and one reason why 
the chronicler of Israel's history found so 
little in it to record was that it presented no 
deeds of martial valor, — no records of bat- 
tles. 

It was an era of peace. Assyria was 
once more a weak power, the Syrian state 
of Damascus had been subdued for a time, 
Israel and Judah between them had ex- 
tended their dominion almost to the limits 
of the old Davidic boundaries, trade revived, 
wealth accumulated, the national hopes and 
the national spirits ran high, and the op- 
pression from the wealthy was keenly felt 
by the poor. The increase of wealth pro- 
duced a leisured class, and luxury gave 
them time for self-indulgence. To these 
the Baalized worship of Jehovah, against 
which Elijah and Elisha had protested, 
appealed as affording opportunity for the 
indulgence of passion. Even if they trans- 
gressed the known laws of their God, they 
thought he could be bought off by sacri- 
fices. 

Meantime there grew up in the village of 
Tekoa in the wilderness of Judah a simple 



AMOS 173 

shepherd. He was poor and eked out his 
living by gathering the coarse sycamore figs 
which were eaten only by the poor. But his 
ear was open to the voice of God, and in 
obedience to that voice he appeared one day 
in the streets of Bethel, the capital of Jero- 
boam's kingdom, with the cry of doom upon 
his lips which stands at the head of this 
chapter. As the people gathered about him 
he made the threat of doom more specific. 
The sins of Damascus, Edom, Moab, and 
other neighboring nations were not only to 
be punished, but the sins of Israel herself. 
With many an eloquent illustration did he 
set forth the truth, that violated law was 
sure to bring doom. Sacrifice was, he 
declared, no part of the primitive religion ; 
it could not put away sin. Justice must 
'' run down like water and righteousness 
as a perennial stream,'' — moral obliquity 
must give place to moral rectitude, — or 
ruin was sure. God was by nature a moral 
God ; He would destroy all who were im- 
moral. 

For some days Amos proclaimed this 
truth till his words were reported to the 



174 AMOS 

king as treasonable, and he was expelled 
from the kingdom. Uttering a warning 
message, couched in the narrative of some 
visions he had had, he departed to his high- 
land shepherd^ s home, and we lose him in 
the obscurity from which he came. Thanks 
to the new literary era, which the prosperity 
of the reign of Jeroboam had made possible, 
his prophecies were written down, and have 
been transmitted to posterity for the edifica- 
tion of the world. 

There is something inspiring in the pic- 
ture of Amos. This humble peasant, leav- 
ing his rustic calling to hurl the anathemas 
of God against the injustice, the oppression, 
the rottenness and the sham religion of a 
wealthy and cultivated capital, faithfully 
proclaiming his message day after day, 
though so far as we know not one disciple 
was found to cheer his preacher's heart, and 
still holding such faith in its truth notwith- 
standing its apparent failure, that he re- 
turned home to put it in writing for future 
generations, was an ideal embodiment of 
the mysticism and the heroism of the high- 
est religious service. He reminds us of 



AMOS 175 

a greater one, who '^ trod the wine-press 
alone/' 

Amos did much to give the world a right 
conception of God. He is one of the first 
clear monotheists. God, — Israel's God, — 
controlled, he declared, all nations. Then, 
too, he re-echoed with great clearness the 
message, which Elijah began to utter, that 
God is a Being who is uncompromisingly 
moral, and who will inevitably punish sin. 
None of the messengers of the olden time 
proclaimed more clearly the reign of law, 
and the moral basis of religion. How moral 
decay was to be overcome, Amos did not 
tell. His picture of God was, it is true, 
somewhat cold and unfeeling, but these 
defects in his message were remedied by 
those who came afterward, and should not 
blind us to the aspects of his theology, his 
work, his character, and his heroism which 
are inspiringly beautiful. 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 



HOSEA. 



** As the bridegroom rejoice th over the bride, 
So shall thy God rejoice over thee." 

Isaiah Ixii, 5. 

*' Love divine, all love excelling, 
Joy of heaven to earth come down, 

Fix in us thy humble dwelling, 
All thy faithful mercies crown." 

—Charles Wesley, 

As Amos was the prophet of the divine 
law, Hosea, who came soon after him and 
took up his work, was the prophet of the 
divine love. If the message of Amos awak- 
ened in a fallen sinner longings to enter upon 
a pure life and to know a real communion 
with God, that of Hosea pointed out how all 
the energies of the great Father were directed 
by the divine love to help into the new life. 

The way in which Hosea was prepared to 
receive this great truth and to proclaim it 
contains in itself a most important lesson 
for all who suffer. A man of pure life and 
affectionate nature, he married the woman 
of his choice. Gradually it dawned upon 

176 



HOSE A 177 

him that she was unworthy of him, and 
that she violated her vow of wedlock. Soon 
she left him altogether and entered upon a 
life of public shame, in which she sank lower 
and lower until she was sold into slavery. 
In spite of her shame, however, and in spite 
of the blight she had cast upon his life, 
Hosea's love followed her. As he brooded 
over the cause and the meaning of this, it 
dawned upon him that just as he had been 
put to shame by his faithless wife and yet 
loved her, so Jehovah had been put to shame 
by Israel, who had ruthlessly broken her 
vows to Him, but that nevertheless His 
heart yearned for the faithless nation. 

At last Hosea could endure his wife's ruin 
no longer. He purchased the now degraded 
slave, separated her from all others, and tried 
by patient attention to win her back to 
virtue and to life. As he did this he also 
grasped the truth that God would do the 
same for Israel, — would in His providence 
separate her from her temptations and so 
unfold to her the depths of His love as to 
win her heart. 



178 HOSE A 

This story of Hosea's is most significant. 
The sublimest truths lie unperceived around 
us until some bitter experience opens our 
eyes to see them ; they knock at our hearts 
in vain until some pain compels us to open 
the door for their admission. This is the 
divine cause of sorrow, of pain, and of dis- 
appointment. God does not permit these 
things to come upon us because He is indif- 
ferent to us, but just because of His love He 
sends them to open our lives to the glorious 
heights of the moral and spiritual life. The 
spikenard of human life must be beaten in 
order to produce its fragrance. It is because 
of this that the ^* afflictions, which are but 
for a moment, work out their exceeding 
and eternal weight of glory." 

Long had the Semitic world thought of 
God as love, but they had held the thought 
in a gross and debasing way. Hosea made 
the thought spiritual ; he elevated it to the 
pure atmosphere of heavenly spotlessness. 
Such a conception of the divine love as he 
presented made social life pure, and raised 
the thoughts and affections of the worship- 
pers to heights only less elevated than those 
to which they were lifted by Jesus Christ. 



HOSE A 179 

Hosea's message is still the message which 
moves the world and raises up the fallen. 
God cares for me, however fallen I am. His 
heart j-earns ; in suffering He labors to make 
me appreciate His love ; patiently He waits 
to welcome the penitent home. The marvel 
is that we can withstand that love so long ! 



CHAPTER XL. 

ISAIAH. 

** And I said : Here am I ; send me." Isaiah vi, 9. 

" Righteousness exalteth a nation, 
But sin is a reproach to any people. ' ' Prov. xiv, 34. 

Isaiah was the type of a Christian man 
in public life. His prophetic activity ex- 
tended over forty years of most eventful 
history. Beginning to prophesy in 740 B. C, 
the year that King Uzziah died, he contin- 
ued his work through the short indepen- 
dent reign of Jotham, the reign of the weak 
Ahaz, and the good Hezekiah. Under the 
last of these monarchs he held the position 
of a confidential adviser, — a position which 
made him the most important political 
figure in Israel after David. Hezekiah no 
doubt accorded him this position on account 
of the strong utterances which Isaiah had 
made at the time of the Syrian war in the 
reign of Ahaz. 

These forty years of Isaiah's life were 
most eventful ones ; they covered a period 
which called for the highest talent in 

180 



ISAIAH 181 

statesmanship, and which severely tested 
the sagacity of the wisest and the faith of the 
most devout. First there came the coalition 
of Syria and Israel against Judah in the 
reign of Ahaz, when the overthrow of Jeru- 
salem was threatened. Ahaz and all his peo- 
ple w^ere greatly terrified ; their hearts, we 
are told trembled *' as the trees of the forest, 
tremble before the wind." Isaiah alone 
retained his courage, and uttered upon this 
occasion some significant prophecies which 
will be considered in subsequent chapters.' 
He foresaw that the new and powerful king 
of Assyria, Tiglath-pileser III., would soon 
give Judah's neighbors on the north enough 
to do to defend their own dominions and 
that thus Judah would be relieved, but in 
spite of his brave and hopeful utterances 
others remained hopeless. The event j ustified 
Isaiah's faith ; the Assyrian king made his 
expedition into the West ; chastised Judah's 
enemies, and saved Jerusalem. All this 
was about 735-733 B. C. 

The next great event was the destruction 
of Samaria and the captivity of the kingdom 

1 See Isaiah chs. vii, 1-ix, 6, and also below chs. xli, xlii. 



182 ISAIAH 

of Israel in 722 B. C. Tiglath-pileser had 
changed the Israelitish dynasty, putting 
Hoshea on the throne. After the death of 
Tiglath-pileser in 727 and the accession of 
Shalmaneser IV. to the Assyrian throne, 
Hoshea rebelled. The armies of Shalmane- 
ser beseiged Samaria for three years. During 
the siege Shalmaneser was succeeded by 
Sargon, whose armies finally captured Sama- 
ria and deported 27,290 of its inhabitants.^ 
Judah was all this time subject to Assyria. 
The temptation for her to rebel with her 
northern neighbor must have been strong, 
and it was doubtless owing to Isaiah that it 
was resisted. Other nations in Palestine 
and Syria rebelled also, and in the year 720 
another great battle was fought at Raphia 
in which they were defeated. 

Some years of quiet followed, when the 
Philistine city of Ashdod rebelled against 
Assyrian rule. The armies of the powerful 
Sargon came clamoring by Judah's very 
doors again as they marched in 711 to sub- 
due the rebels.^ 



1 The number is taken from an inscription of Sargon's. 
' Cf. Isaiah xx, 1, and Roger's History of Babylonia and Assy- 
ria, vol. ii, 169. 



ISAIAH 183 

In 705 Sargon was succeeded by his 
son Sennacherib. This event was the sig- 
nal for another revolt on the part of all of 
Assyrians western subjects. In all these 
petty states there were two political parties, 
one which favored making Assyria their 
suzerian, and the other of which advocated 
the expulsion of Assyria from the West by 
obtaining the aid of Egypt. Isaiah had all 
along belonged to the first of these parties, 
and had felt that he had the guidance of Je- 
hovah in so doing. Up to this time he had 
also been able to persuade the king to adhere 
to the Assyrian policy. Now, however, the 
king chose to act in accord with the Egyp- 
tian party and joined them in their rebellion 
against Assyria.^ This brought against Je- 
rusalem the armies of Sennacherib in the 
great siege of 701 B. C, — a siege in which, 
though the armies of the Assyrian suffered 
disaster and withdrew, ^ — resulted in the 
resubjugation of Judah to Assyria. Several 
of Isaiah's most important prophecies were 



* We now know this from Sennacherib's own etatgment. See 
Price's Monuments and the Old Testament, p. 181 ff. 
3 See 2 Kings xix, 35, and the reference in n. 1. 



184 ISAIAH 

uttered in connection with this last crisis, * 
soon after which he probably died. 

One important lesson of Isaiah's life is 
that public affairs demand the devoted 
service of the holiest and most consecrated 
men. In our great republic God is cry- 
ing out through many a glaring wrong : 
" Whom shall I send ? '' but how few have 
the faith of Isaiah to answer : " Here am I ; 
send me." England has had her Gladstone 
and her John Bright ; America, her Wash- 
ington, Lincoln and McKinley ; the latter 
country has also now her Roosevelt and her 
Seth Low, but how few of those who, like 
Isaiah, are blessed with the keenest spiritual 
vision, the highest moral sense and the sub- 
limest faith are now willing to serve Christ 
by serving the state ! 

Not all are called to public service, but 
from Isaiah each citizen should learn the 
religious importance of the faithful perform- 
ance of civic duties. In our English-speak- 
ing countries all voters are sovereigns, and 
are in part responsible for all civic or 
national sin. ^ 



^ Chs. X, xi, xviii, xxii, xxiii, xxix, xxxi, etc. 
' See Kent's History of the Hebrew People, for fuller account 
of Isaiah. 



CHAPTER XLI. 

IMMANUEL. 

" Immanuel ; which is, being interpreted, God with 
us." Matt, i, 23. 

" Who like Thyself my guide and stay can be ? 
Through cloud and sunshine, Lord, abide with me." 

—H, F. Lyte. 

It was at the time when the rumor of the 
approaching attack of the kings of Israel 
and of Damascus had carried terror to the 
heart of King Ahaz, and to the hearts of the 
people of Jerusalem, that Isaiah met Ahaz 
and encouraged him to ask a sign from God 
that he and his people would be delivered 
from this impending danger, i Ahaz, cov- 
ering his lack of faith under a cloak of pre- 
tended reverence, refused to do so, saying 
that it would be tempting Jehovah. Isaiah 
then declared that Jehovah Himself would 
give a sign : a young woman ^ would bear a 



^See Isaiah, vii. 'The Hebrew word used does not signify " vir- 
gin," but " a young woman." The word implies nothing as to whether 
she be married or unmarried. Probably Isaiah was thinking of a 
married woman. The Greek translation of the 0. T. mistakenly 
renders it "virgin," and the author of the Gospel of Matthew, who 
used the Greek version, naturally quoted it that way. It fitted in with 
the story of the virgin.birth of Christ which had come down to him. 

185 



186 IMMANUEL 

son, and, in her confidence that God would 
deliver Israel, she would name him Im- 
manuel, " God is with us," and before a time 
sufficiently long had elapsed so that the 
child could become old enough to discern 
between good and evil, her faith would 
be vindicated, — God would interpose and 
cripple the two monarchies which were then 
threatening Judah, How Tiglath-pileser 
came and fulfilled this prediction of Isaiah, 
we have seen in the preceding chapter. 

To understand this prediction, we need to 
turn back a little. In the early Semitic 
tribes, when they held the conception of 
God described in chapter I, they thought 
their God was bound to deliver them what- 
ever they might do and into whatever straits 
they might come. They were therefore al- 
ways saying in time of danger : " We shall 
be saved, for our god is with us."^ Al- 
though Jehovah was united to Israel by 
covenant instead of by kinship, there were 
nevertheless many Israelites who indulged 
in this same heathen confidence. Amos had 



*The underlying thought was that the god had no existence apart 
from the tribe, ana must save the tribe or perish himself. 



IMMANUEL 187 

sought to enforce the truth, that God is not 
on the side of the wicked, and will not 
deliver them. "Seek good, and not evil," 
he exclaims, " that ye may live : and so 
Jehovah, the God of hosts, shall be with you 
as ye say/'^ 

Isaiah was speaking under different cir- 
cumstances. The faith of the nation was so 
shaken that they were in despair ; they 
hardly dared to ask for help. He encour- 
aged them to believe that Jehovah would 
succor them by the manifestation of His 
divine aid, in order to revive their faith. 
In his mouth the name Immanuel had both 
a backward and a forward glance. It re- 
minded them of the old faith so familiar to 
all, while it contained the suggestion of a 
larger and more spiritual consciousness of 
the presence of God. 

Our first evangelist has, by his quotation 
of the passage made it evident that he and 
his generation recognized that in Jesus 
Christ God had been with them in a new 
and fuller way; and we gladly recognize 
the truth of this fact. In no other being 

*Amo8 V, 14. 



188 IMMANUEL 

who ever dwelt upon earth has God been 
so clearly manifested. In the centuries which 
had elapsed between Isaiah and the coming 
of Christ the old consciousness of the pres- 
ence of God in life had nearly vanished. 
Men thought of God as afar off ; they were 
looking and longing for Him to come in 
His messiah. That God was come in Jesus 
was, therefore, a new and clear message of 
hope and cheer. 

Jesus taught His disciples that God would 
be with them as the Spirit ^ after His own 
departure ; that thus He Himself would also 
be with them always. ^ In the light of that 
truth we may live. ''Closer is He than 
breathing, nearer than hands and feet." 
" He is not far from any one of us." We 
may be as ignorant of His presence as the 
blind man is of the quality of light, if we 
have not eyes to see Him. As it is only the 
clear pools which reflect the stars, so it is 
only the " pure in heart who see God." 
God is with us, but just as surely as the at- 
mosphere, upon which all healthy beings 
live, is the source of corruption to all dead 

»Jolm xiv, 16, 17 and xvi. 13. "Matt, xxviii, 20. 



IMMANUEL 189 

tissue, so surely is the presence of God the 
earnest of the destruction of all that is sin- 
ful. To find consolation in the great truth 
of the immanence of God, one must be con- 
scious that his heart has been purified, and 
that his life consists of a definite purpose to 
conform to the fundamental laws of right- 
eousness, which are the expression of the 
nature of God, and are the basis of the uni- 
verse. 

To have God consciously with us to 
heighten every joy, to share every pain, to 
heal every wound by the balm of His love, 
to guide us in the right way, to disclose to 
us brighter and better ideals, and to help us 
to attain them, — this is a privilege unspeak- 
ably great, but it is the privilege of the 
Christian. 



CHAFPER XLII. 

THE PRINCE OF THE FOUR NAMES. 

" For unto us a child is born, 
Unto us a son is given, 
And dominion is on his shoulder : 
And his name is called Wonder-Counsellor, 
God-of-a-warrior, Father-of-Booty, 
Prince of peace." 

Isa. ix, 6, according to the Hebrew. 

" A fairer paradise is founded now 
For Adam and his chosen sons, whom thou 
A Savior art come down to re-install 
Where they shall dwell secm'e." 

Milton's Paradise Regained. 

The prophecy quoted at the beginning of 
this chapter has long been regarded by 
Christians as a prophecy of Christ. It was 
a prophecy of the Messiah, and as Christ ful- 
filled the Messianic prophecies better than 
even the Jews expected them to be fulfilled, 
it was in that sense a prophecy of Him. 
We cannot now think of the prophet as look- 
ing forward through the centuries and be- 
holding Christ, as we behold Him in look- 
ing back. We are compelled to recognize 
that Isaiah was holding an ideal before the 
190 



THE PRINCE OF THE FOUR NAMES 191 

men of his time, which would be helpful to 
them, and should first look to see what 
meaning his words had for the men of his 
own generation. 

This prophecy forms a part of the same 
series of utterances as the prophecy of Im- 
manuel. Like that prophecy it was spoken 
when the prophet foresaw that Tiglath- 
pileser would march into the West and begin 
those wars, which would crush the enemies of 
Judah. The gaze of Isaiah went beyond 
that. He looked forward to a time when 
Israel would have a king greater than Tig- 
lath-pileser. It was a hard age. The inner 
spiritual nature of the kingdom of God had 
not been disclosed to even the best of men. 
Isaiah could think of no more fitting picture 
of the Messiah who would, he felt sure, 
come, than that he should be a glorified 
warrior. Assyria was then the supreme 
nation in war ; her king was the model war- 
rior; but the Messiah would out-do even 
him. If before his battles Tiglath-pileser 
planned his struggle, Israel's Messiah would 
be a Wonder-Counsellor, far surpassing the 
Assyrian. If the Assyrian monarch fought 



192 THE PRINCE OF THE FOUR NAMES 

strenuously his fights, Israel's king should be 
a very god of a warrior,^ If Tiglath-pileser 
spoiled the country of his enemies and car- 
ried off his prey, Israel's prince would be an 
abundant possessor of booty. That would 
be one of his chief characteristics. After his 
conquests the Assyrian monarch took meas- 
ures to keep his new territory in peace ; so 
the Messiah would be a very prince of 
peace.. It was, however, to be a peace won 
by the severest struggle and the most glo- 
rious victories. 

All this, as the church has long per- 
ceived,^ is really a parable of the work of 
Christ. The events of the inner struggles 
and the spiritual victories of the soul have 
long been pictured in terms of the battle- 
field. The soul has its enemies. If it does not 
overcome them, they will accomplish a most 
disastrous conquest over it. Jesus Himself 
faced such a battle at the time of His tempta- 
tion. The attitude which He took toward the 
struggle was practically unique. The teach- 
ing which He gave to others concerning the 

* The word " god " in Hebrew is more widely applied than in 
English, being sometimes, as in this passage, used of human beings. 
» I do not mean to say that the church has understood it as here 
»et forth. 



THE PRINCE OF THE FOUR NAMES 193 

struggle of life was of the same quality, and 
was marvellous indeed. The Sermon on the 
Mount, if it stood alone, would entitle Him 
to the name ^' Wonder-Counsellor." 

But Jesus was also the ideal spiritual 
warrior. Not only in the way in which He 
repelled temptation, ^ but in the way in 
which by word and deed throughout His 
ministry He withstood evil at the greatest 
sacrifice of personal ease, and most of all in 
the supreme gift of Himself upon the cross. 
None other is to be compared to Him ! How 
much more appropriate do the prophet's 
words seem to Him than ever Isaiah could 
have dreamed, — " God of a warrior ! " Most 
fittingly does the author of the Epistle to 
the Hebrews describe Him as the ^* Captain 
of our salvation." 

He is also the '^ Father of booty " in that 
He brings all those passions, appetites, and 
powers of life, which seem to be hostile to 
the spiritual life, into subjection to Himself. 
They are not eradicated, but, — better than 
that, — they are made to contribute material 
upon which the spiritual life can feed. He 

^ See above ch.TiiL 



194 THE PRINCE OF THE FOUR NAMES 

can make passions — which, if they ran riot, 
would make the man a beast, contribute 
the energy to take him to heights of saint- 
hood and spiritual experience which would 
otherwise never be reached. 

He, too, is the " Prince of peace/' Peace 
can only come to the spirit, all of whose 
powers are brought into harmony. The 
warfare into which He leads produces that 
harmony. It takes the soul into fellowship 
with God ; He gives dominion over all the 
sources of life's felicity. He unites the 
powers of the life for harmonious, healthful, 
spiritual living. When He says : '^ Peace I 
leave with you ; my peace I give unto you/' 
it is, for the soul which listens aright, no 
idle utterance. 



CHAPTER XLIII. 

JOSIAH'S REFORM. 

"The law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul, 
The testimony of tiie Lord is sure, making wise the 
simple." Psalm xix, 7. 

*• And the low chancel side-lights half acquaint 
The eye with shrines of prophet, bard and saint, 
Their age-dimmed tablets traced in doubtful writ ! 
But only when on form and word obscure 
Falls from above the white supernal light 
We read the mystic characters aright." 

— Whittier. 

About thirty-five years before the Baby- 
lonian exile, in the days of king Josiah, 
Judah's last good and noble king, a great 
commotion was created in the religious cir- 
cles of Jerusalem by the discovery in the 
temple of a law-book previously unknown. 
It professed to be the law of Moses. It was 
read before the king, and he was profoundly 
impressed by it. He commanded that its 
genuineness should be tested, and they 
applied to it the only test they knew, the 
religious test. It was submitted to Huldah, 
the prophetess, and she, finding it in har- 
mony with what she conceived the will of 

195 



196 josiah's reform 

Jehovah as expressed through Moses to be, 
pronounced it genuine. It was very appar- 
ent that the life of the nation was by no 
means organized in accordance with the will 
of Jehovah, if this law expressed His will ; 
Josiah, therefore, instituted a reform in 
which he sought to bring the kingdom into 
conformity to this law. It is clear when 
we compare the account of this reform in 
Kings ^ with the Pentateuch, that the law- 
book then found was the legal kernel of our 
book of Deuteronomy. This is the almost 
unanimous view of modern scholars. The 
abolition of the high places, which Josiah 
accomplished, is prescribed in Deuteron- 
omy ; the exclusion of Asherahs and pillars 
is likewise enjoined by the Deuteronomic 
code, and there are a number of such coinci- 
dences. 

The appearance of this code at this time 
was most opportune. From the time of 
Elijah prophets had labored to purify the 
worship of Jehovah from foreign and un- 
worthy elements, but had labored with little 
success. In the time of Isaiah they had 

1 S«e 2 Kings, zxil, xxiii. 



197 



almost succeeded, but the reign of Manasseh 
brought a disastrous reaction, which seemed 
to turn the tide of progress back indefi- 
nitely. None of these prophets had known 
such a law as this, for they never appeal 
to it. Could they have done so, it would 
have been a great aid to their cause. Their 
work, had however, prepared the way for 
it, and the time had come when it was pos- 
sible to eliminate many of the old corrupting 
elements from the current forms of worship. 
This law came, as did the Greek Testament 
to the devout men of Europe at the time of 
the revival of learning, to profoundly stir the 
conscience, and to awaken new ideals. King 
and people accepted the law and bound 
themselves to keep it, and the prophets 
devoted the following years to a ministry 
calculated to help the people to keep this 
resolution. 

This is the historical beginning of our 
Biblical canon. Sacred narratives had been 
known before, and a little code of laws, but 
they had never been formally accepted by 
the people as the basis of their religious life. 
The laws, too, which they had known were 



198 josiah's reform 

largely secular, ^ while the new laws, not 
only regulated much more closely the ritual, 
but breathed a more gentle spirit into the 
common relationships of life. 

One cannot reflect on this first step in the 
canonization of our Bible without feelings 
of reverent thankfulness. It was the begin- 
ning of a recognition that God has stored 
up in the records of the experiences of the 
saints and heroes of the past laws for our 
guidance, words of warning for our sins, 
and messages of cheer for our difficulties. 
In the course of the centuries other books 
were added, until the '^ divine library,'^ as 
Jerome used to call it, includes not only 
the records of the history, the polity, the 
aspirations and the tribulations of the Jew- 
ish people, but the portrait of '' the one 
ineffable Face,'^ and the thoughts of those 
who were inspired by it. Since then it has 
circulated over the world, revealing the 
heart of man to himself, holding before 
human eyes the law of God, awakening 
the conscience, unfolding the story of the 



* It was the so-called " Book of the Coyenant," Ex. xxii, 24- 
xxiii, 49. 



^j-SBammMa^^mitSamam 



josiah's refokm 199 

Father's forgiveness in Christ, and forming 
by its lofty teaching the characters of the 
saints. 

Can one really measure his life by its 
best standards and not follow Josiah's exam- 
ple by instituting a reform ? 



CHAPTER XLIV. 

JEREMIAH. 

** My grace is suflacient for thee." 2 Cor. xii, 9. 

" When sorrow all our heart would ask, 
We need not shun our daily task, 

And hide ourselves for calm ; 
The herbs we seek to heal our woe 
Familiar by our pathway grow, 

Our common air is balm." 

—Keble. 

Few biographies are sadder than that of 
Jeremiah. Beginning his prophetic work 
when a mere boy, six years before Josiah 
undertook his reform, Jeremiah threw him- 
self most earnestly into the work of lifting 
his compatriots to the ideal which the new- 
found law set before them. The untimely 
death of Josiah in the year 608, transformed 
what had seemed a hopeful task into a most 
hopeless one. The kings who followed were 
not enthusiastic for the new movement, 
and were unwilling to follow consistently 
the only policy which could prolong the life 
of the Jewish state, and which Jeremiah, 
like Isaiah before him, continually advo- 
cated. Babylon had now taken the place of 
200 



BfiiBiflfiilBiMfiiil 



JEREMIAH 201 

Assyria as a world power. Israel's safety 
depended on an alliance with Babylon, but 
the monarchs were always trying to unite 
with Egypt and other states in the West to 
throw off the Babylonian yoke. The result 
was a series of national disasters. Jerusalem 
was besieged and taken by Nebuchadnezzar 
in the year 598, and a large number of the 
nobility taken captive along with the king. 
A new king, the creature of Nebuchad- 
nezzar, was placed on the throne, but he in 
turn rebelled, and in 586 the Babylonians 
completely destroyed Jerusalem and razed 
its temple^ to the ground. 

These were trying years for Jeremiah. A 
consistent advocate of the Babylonian policy, 
he was often suspected of treason, and his 
life was more than once in danger. But 
with brave and faithful heart he remained 
true to his divine message, though all men 
seemed to turn against him. At last he 
was carried against his will to Egypt, a 
country against which he had prophesied 
all his life, and we lose sight of him there. 



^For details see Kent's History of ike Hebrew People, Vol. II., 
pp. 183-204. 



202 JEREMIAH 

Throughout his life every evil which he 
opposed seemed to prosper, and every good 
which he advocated was trampled upon. 
At times he was greatly discouraged ; who 
would not be ? But, in spite of everything, 
he was loyal to the truth, and, though events 
seemed to go most persistently as he wished 
them not to do, by cheering the hearts of a 
few faithful men and women he did much to 
establish the Israel of the future. 

In this life of sorrow Jeremiah found, as 
Hosea had done before him, that God was 
teaching him new and important truth. 
Before his time it had been thought that 
God dealt with the nation rather than with 
the individual ; the individual was of im- 
portance only as his conduct affected the 
nation. The family had been thought to be 
the unit; childreu suffered punishment for 
the sins of their fathers, and fathers, for the 
sins of their children. Jeremiah was the 
first to learn that God deals with the indi- 
vidual, and that moral responsibility is 
personal. He, too, perceived before others 
of his time, that religion is a matter of the 

iJer.xxxi,29,30. 



ii£iifii^^Bii^^^ai^aSl^i^^^^B^BiS&& 



JERKMIAH 203 

heart, and that it can exist without ritual or 
outward aid. Other prophets had appar- 
ently believed that the gods of other nations 
had a real existence ; ' Jeremiah is the first 
to recognize them as mere vanities. ^ He 
also first grasped the fact that Gentile^ as 
well as Jew may come and worship Jehovah, 
and find salvation and peace. To grasp four 
great and fundamental religious truths 
which other men have not grasped is no 
small privilege. To add these truths to the 
common stock of religious knowledge, is no 
small contribution for one life. 

Herein the life of Jeremiah teaches us its 
lesson. It is the lesson of the life of Hosea, 
and the lesson which Paul learned in the 
hour of his affliction. Adversity, if borne in 
the right spirit, leads to mountains of trans- 
figuration ; sorrow, if the soul seeks the 
grace which is sufficient, opens the eyes to 
new visions of God. 

"Go, then, earthly fame and treasure ! 

Come disaster, scorn, and pain I 
In thy service pain is pleasure 

With thy favor loss is gain." 



>See Micah iv, 5. ' Jer. xri, IB ff, aud xir, 22. » Jer. xvi, 19, 20. 



204 JEREMIAH 

When the life of Jeremiah ended, all the 
powers against which he had striven seemed 
triumphant, but the spirit of the heroic pro- 
phet lived and animated the Jewish church 
in the later centuries. In this respect the 
life of Jeremiah resembles the life of the 
Son of man. When He was crucified and 
buried, His enemies thought they had tri- 
umphed over Him forever, but His spirit 
animates and inspires the Christian world. 
Love conquers by suffering, by surrender, 
and by the cross. It is still God's way of 
advancing the kingdom. May we prove as 
faithful in the work as was Jeremiah ! 



CHAPTER XLV. 

HABAKKUK. 

" The righteous shall live by his faithfulness." 
Habakkuk ii, 4. R. V. Margin. 

" Though the fig-tree do not blossom, 
And no fruit be on the vines, 
Fail the produce of the olive, 
And the fields yield no meat, 
Cut oft' be the flocks from the fold 
And no cattle in the stalls. 
Yet in the LORD will I exult, 
I will rejoice m the God of my Salvation." 
— Habakkuk m, //, iS. Version of G. A. Smith, 

Another prophet, who lived in the sad 
days of Jeremiah, and who shared Jere- 
miah's hopes and doubts, was Habakkuk. 
The little prophecy of his, which has sur- 
vived, is mainly devoted to a problem, 
which at that time pressed heavily upon 
the heart of every Jew : " Why do the right- 
eous suffer?'^ After the reform of Josiah 
the nation was conscious as never before 
that it was making a noble effort to do the 
will of God in so far as that will was known. 
Now, too, they had the external standard 
of a written law by which to measure their 

205 



206 HABAKKUK 

fidelity or their defection. It was accord- 
ingly possible to see to what degree the 
divine ideal of their life was realized. But 
the more nearly they seemed to approach the 
appointed goal^ the more numerous became 
the national misfortunes. What did it all 
mean ? The national theology had always 
taught that prosperity would attend the 
righteous, but now adversity was their con- 
stant portion. 

As Habakkuk brooded over this he gained 
a new insight into the meaning of life. He 
saw that in the last analysis it was not 
prosperity and present victory which counts, 
but character. The insolent enemies of 
Israel should be finally overthrown, because 
their prosperity was not founded upon jus- 
tice and uprightness of heart. If Israel 
could but be patient, and keep her fidelity 
to her God and to right intact,^ her reward 
was sure. Wrong might triumph for a 
time, but in the ultimate shock of things all 
would be swept away except the strong and 
pure character. The same truth is taught 



^The English versions wrongly translate " faith." See G. A 
Smith's Book of the Twelve Prophets, Vol. II. p. 140. 



HABAKKUK 207 

under another figure by Paul ; it is only the 
gold, the silver, and the precious stones 
which will survive the fire ; the wood, hay 
and stubble shall be destroyed.^ 

How prone the world is to forget this 
lesson, first taught by Habakkuk, but re- 
peated many times since his day. The 
spirit of the present age praises success, 
however it may have been won. Young 
men are taught, not by word but by the 
standards of the market place, the college, 
and the church, that at all hazards success 
must be achieved. No matter about the 
man's ideals, if only he be rich. Character 
is a secondary matter in many circles, if only 
one be brilliant. But success is only for a 
day, while character abides. In the testing 
moments of life — in the shock of worlds — 
it is the just who survive. '^Character is 
destiny." 

The third chapter of Habakkuk is a poem. 
It once stood in our psalter, or in one of the 
psalters from which ours was compiled, for 
it has the musical notes attached to it, which 
we find in the psalter. Some one must 

n Cor. iii. U-IS. 



208 HABAKKUK 

have transferred it to its present position in 
the book of Habakkuk, because it harmon- 
ized so beautifully with Habakkuk's spirit. 
It exemplifies the fact that the man of faith- 
fulness and of justice is also the man of 
faith. No more sublime picture is pre- 
sented in literature than the rural poet con- 
templating the utter desolation of all that 
the men of his class counted of worth, and 
still able to exclaim : 

•' Yet in the LORD will I exult, 

I will rejoice in the God of my salvation. 

Jehovah, the Lord, is my might ; 

He hath made my feet like hinds', 

And on my heights He gives me to march." 

In hours of bitterest sorrow these manly 
and devout words from the distant past are 
still our solace, giving us faith to look 
beyond present darkness to the coming light. 
The faith of this poet was like the faith of 
Paul, who could say : '' Most gladly, there- 
fore, will I suffer, that the power of Christ 
may rest upon me." 



CHAPTER XLVI. 

JOB. 

** Ye have heard of the patience of Job." Jas. v, 11. 

" If a man die — might he hve again ? 
All the days of my service would I wait, 
Until my renewal came." 

—Job xiv, 14, Genung's Version. 

The book of Job is another piece of litera- 
ture which grew out of that great period of 
stress from which the book of Habakkuk 
came. From a literary standpoint it is 
greatly superior to Habakkuk. It is one of 
the world's great poems, artistic, strong, and 
profound. Genung has happily called the 
book the " Epic of the Inner Life.'' i a 
name which most aptly describes it. The 
author of the book felt the perplexities which 
the problems of the age imposed upon those 
who held the old theology, and set himself 
in this work to depict them. He was a 
sage, and sages stood somewhat apart from 
the prophetic and priestly aspects of life. 



» Genung' 8 Translation of Job, " The Epic of the Innei- Life," 
Houghton & Mifflin, 1895, is the best rendering of Job in English 
though his treatment of critical questions is not, as in the case of 
the Elihu speeches, always satisfactory. 

209 



210 JOB 

They allowed themselves a greater range 
of thought, and greater freedom of speech 
in treating divine themes. 

The author of Job selected a tradition, 
which had come down from the far past, of 
a series of calamities that had happened to 
an old patriarch. On the basis of these he 
constructed his imaginative poem, in which 
the friends of Job present the out-worn argu- 
ments of the old Jewish theology, while Job 
himself exhibits in his replies, in his cries of 
pain, and in the aspirations to which he gives 
utterance, the growth which such perplex- 
ities and such pain make possible for the 
devout spirit. The poet has done his work 
with such skill that we may actually see 
the growth of the soul as it takes place 
before our eyes. It is an epic such as may 
be enacted within the breast of any man, 
who comes face to face with the problem of 
evil and of suffering in this world. 

We have in previous studies become 
familiar with the divine function of suffer- 
ing. We have learned how some of the 
choicest spirits, such as Hosea and Jeremiah, 
were made able, in the school of suffering, 



JOB 211 

to contribute some of the most important 
truths to the world's religious knowledge. 
With them we must place the author of the 
book of Job, for in the furnace of affliction 
he learned that the present life is all too 
short for the realization of a divine theodicy 
of perfect justice, and that there must be a 
life beyond. This was the truth to which 
pain opened the gates of his spirit. 

In order to appreciate the real value of 
his contribution to religious thought, we 
should remember the general view of the 
future life, which his contemporaries held. 
It has been already outlined in these pages. ^ 
It was thought to be a colorless existence, 
into which the blessing and the justice of God 
never came. Centuries before the contact 
with Greek thought had given to the He- 
brews the clear conception of immortality 
which they later entertained, the thought of 
it sprang up in the mind of our poet. It 
came first as a faint hope : 

" If a man die — might he live again ? " 
But as he continued to strive with his suf- 
fering, it grew to a firm conviction. Man 

* Above in ch, xviii. 



212 JOB 

must come face to face with his Maker. 
This world and this life, with all their trib- 
ulations and disappointments, are too small 
and insufficient for the satisfaction of the 
human heart. God must have more in 
store for us or he would never have given 
us the natures which he has. Thus the 
confidence of the poet arises until he can 
singi : 

*• I know that my redeemer liveth ; 
That he will stand survivor over the dust ; 
And though when my skin is gone, they will rend 

this body, 
Yet, I without my flesh shall see God ; 
Whom I shall see, I, for myself; 
Whom mine eyes shall behold a stranger no more. 
Oh, for this my reins consume within me ! " ^ 

Here again suffering led to the perception 
of most sublime truth. It is the lesson often 
found in the Old Testament and often dwelt 
upon in these pages. It is God's way to 
disclose His truth to hearts thus prepared. 
These examples well illustrate the Master's 
words : " Blessed are they that mourn, for 
they shall be comforted." 

^ The writer does not agree with those critics who regard these 
words as a later interpolation. ^ jq^j ^ix, 25-27, according to the 
Hebrew. 



CHAPTER XLVII. 



EZEKIEL. 



*• The heavens were opened, and I saw visions of 
God. Ezekieli, 1. 

"He felt the heart of silence 

Throb with a soundless word, 
And by the inward ear alone 
A spirit's voice he heard. 

And the spoken word seemed written 

On air and wave and sod, 
And the bending walls of sapphire 

Blazed with the voice of God." 

— WhiUier. 

EzEKiEL was preeminently an idealist. 
He was a man of visions and mystic com- 
munion. His lot was cast in circumstances 
which would have crushed the spirit of 
many, but the heavenly vision lifted him 
above the baifling present, and filled his 
soul with courage and hope. With a fine 
disregard of the sacred traditions of the past, 
he dared to utter the visions which he saw, 
and thus he became one of the founders of 
the future greatness of his people. 

213 



214 EZEKIEL 

Ezekiel was born of a priestly family. He 
was taken to Babylonia with king Jehoia- 
chin in the year 598 B.C., when Nebuchad- 
nezzar took the first body of captives thither. 
Ezekiel was attached to a group of captives 
which was settled on the river Chebar — a 
river which has recently been shown to have 
been near Nippur, about sixty miles south- 
east of Babylon. It was a lonely place for 
a devout young priest. Another youthful 
Levite, who was forcibly taken away from 
his native land in the same way, has re- 
corded his feelings for us in that plaintive 
psalm : 

" As the hart panteth for the water brooks, 
So panteth my soul after thee, O God." ^ 

His first feeling was that he was separated 
from his God in being separated from the 
temple and the land of Israel. But just 
as the psalmist was comforted with the 
thought that God could be with him where 
he was going, so Ezekiel, brooding over the 
mysterious fortune which had overtaken 
him and his people, found God by the river 



Psalm xlii, 



EZEKIEL 215 

Chebar. Five years after his captivity began, 
he thus became a prophet. 

For seven years before Jerusalem finally 
fell, he united his voice with that of Jere- 
miah in an endeavor to keep the nation faith- 
ful to the right, in order that, if possible, the 
final catastrophe might be averted. When 
all this was of no avail, and the final calam- 
ity was over, Ezekiel did not despair. The 
divine vision sustained him. Contrary to 
all analogy, he had faith to believe that 
the captive nation would be restored, and, 
prompted by the divine voice, he proceeded 
to lay new plans for the future civil and 
religious polity of the nation. 

In doing this we must not think of 
Ezekiel simply as the recipient of an ecstatic 
vision which superseded his mental power 
of activity. It is clear that the record of his 
visions has been carefully thought out. 
Ezekiel was an original thinker, but his 
thought is made all the more valuable by 
being tinged with the emotion of the mystic 
devotee. 

In outlining the future polity of his peo- 
ple he illustrated the principle which Lowell 
has so well expressed : 



216 EZEKIEL 

"New occasions teach new duties; Time makes 
ancient good uncouth ; 
They must upward still, and onward, who would 
keep abreast of truth." 

The Deuteronomic code, which had been 
hailed only a generation before as the law of 
God, he planned to supersede, and drew up 
a new code of laws, a new plan for the tem- 
ple, a new scheme for the division of the 
land among the tribes, as well as a new 
scheme for the government of the land,* 
What a sublime act of faith ! The captive 
bending over his scroll and recording the 
laws for a nation that is blotted out is an 
example for the ages. His influence on the 
future is an encouragement to all disheart- 
ened reformers. 

The work of Ezekiel partook of the char- 
acter of the work of all pure idealists. Some 
of its features were exceedingly practical, 
while others were utterly impracticable. It 
also served the purpose and met the fate of 
the work of the idealist in every age. It 
inspired and encouraged many others ; its 



1 See Ezekiel xl-xlviii. ' 1 refer to his scheme for redividing the 
land. See the chart of it in Davidson's Ezekiel in the Cambridge 
Bible for Schools and Colleges, p. 355. 



EZEKIEL 217 

practical features were taken up and em- 
bodied in the code which in the next cen- 
tury became the fundamental law of the 
nation. 1 Its impractical features were ig- 
nored and did no harm. It is given to no 
man to see the truth in all its relations with 
perfection. It is enough if by his vision he 
lifts the age a little. 

God is calling for Ezekiels now. Old 
systems are passing away. If the future is 
to be as good as the past, thoughtful men 
with hearts aflame with visions of God must 
think and speak and plan for the future. 
The heavenly vision hovers above many a 
head. Oh, that we might see it and be 
obedient to it ! 



1 Such is the case in the matter of the Lerites as separate from the 

Sriests. Ezekiel legislated them into existence (ch. xliv, 8-13). In 
le Levitical code, which was adopted in the time of Nehemiah, 
they are a prominent feature of the organization. 



CHAPTER XLVIII. 

THE GREAT UNKNOWN. 

** He waketh morning by morning, he waketh mine 
ear to hear as the disciples." Isaiah 1, 4, (according 
to the Hebrew), 

"That low man seeks a httle thing to do, 
Sees it and does it : 
This high man, with a great thing to pursue, 

Dies ere he knows it. 
That low man goes on adding one to one, 

His hundred's soon hit : 
This high man, aiming at a million, 
Misses an unit. ' ' 

— Browning. 

Scholars are wont to call the great 
prophet who lived near the end of the 
Babylonian exile, and whose work has been 
accidentally bound up with that of the 
prophet Isaiah, " the great Unknown/' be- 
cause his name has not come down to us. 
In one way this is a misnomer, for we know 
his thought, his faith, his conception of God, 
and his conception of the ideal life, far better 
than we know the inner life of most of the 
men to whom we can attach the label by 
which they were known to their contem- 
poraries. To thus know this prophet, and 
218 



THE GREAT UNKNOWN 219 

to appreciate his work at its real value, is 
in itself a religious experience. 

That the chapters which follow the thirty- 
ninth of our book of Isaiah, were composed 
in the Babylonian exile, is now a generally 
accepted fact. They presuppose an environ- 
ment when Jerusalem and the temple were 
in ruins, ^ when Babylon and not Assyria 
was the dominant power of the world, and 
when Cyrus was a well known political 
figure, — a conqueror, who was narrowing 
the circle of his conquests nearer and nearer 
to Babylon. 2 The literary style and the 
theology of these chapters also differ^ from 
the literary style and the theology of Isaiah 
the son of Amoz. The analogy of prophecy 
in other parts of the Old Testament also 
leads us to the same conclusion.* 

This conclusion, so far from detracting 
from the inspiration of the prophecy, or from 
its religious value, increases our recognition 
of both. Here was a man who took up 
the work of Ezekiel with a faith greater, if 



iSee Isa. xliv, 26 ; Iviii, 12 ; Ixi, 4 ; Ixiii, 18 ; Ixiv, 10, ff. 'See Isa. 
xliv, 28 ; xlv, 1. ^See Driver's Introduction to the Literature of 
the Old Testament^ p. 224 flf. *See the reference to Driver in the 
preceding note. 



220 THE GEE AT UNKNOWIN^ 

possible, than Ezekiel's, and certainly with 
an eloquence and a poetic power to which 
Ezekiel was a stranger. He foresaw that 
God was shaping events so as to present an 
opportunity^ for captive Israel to return to 
her land. He beheld the mass of his com- 
patriots, who had been seethed in the Baby- 
lonian melting-pot of the nations, faithless, 
spiritless, despondent, and utterly unpre- 
pared to profit by the coming opportunity. 
Morning by morning his ear was wakened 
with messages calculated to arouse and in- 
spire them ; day by day the messages were 
eloquently delivered. Fortunately for us 
the substance of these messages has been 
preserved, and forms one of the most at- 
tractive parts of the Old Testament, — a 
portion, which has been not inaptly called, 
the fifth Gospel. 

The first feature of the work of this great 
prophet, which claims our attention, is his 
use of the intellect. His faith is an intel- 
lectual faith, — a reasoned faith ; it does not 
spring from mere feeling. He had read the 
history of the world, had thought upon it, 
and had found in the works of God in 



THE GREAT UNKNOWN 221 

creation and in the history of His people an 
irrefutable argument for the being and the 
goodness of God. This argument he pre- 
sents with a power and a beauty unequaled 
in the religious literature of the world. 
This prophet is the prophet of the educated, 
thinking man. He also is a fine example 
of a man who sees God in contemporary 
events, and who realizes that he is living 
and working where God is making history. 
Another important feature of his work is 
his great faith in what God will do for His 
people, and the consequent effort which he 
makes to persuade the gross-hearted, this- 
worldly multitude to cast themselves upon 
God, and to undertake to build up the ideal 
state. Like One greater than he, he believed 
that "all things are possible to him who 
believes.'^ It is for this reason that his 
chapters abound in those exquisite assur- 
ances, which are still the choicest promises 
to the Christian pilgrim, such as : ^' Fear 
thou not for I am with thee/' and " When 
thou passest through the waters, I will be 
with thee." Then, too, he saw reason for 
that which had puzzled Habakkuk and the 



222 THE GREAT UNKNOWN 

author of the book of Job ; he caught a 
glimpse of why the righteous suffer. It 
was opened to him that that suffering was 
God's appointed means of diffusing the 
knowledge of Himself and of lifting care- 
less and stupid men up to the level of faith 
and of nobility. But of this we have already 
treated.! 

Insensate indeed is the spirit of him who 
can read the work of this prophet under- 
standingly and not experience a sacramental 
meeting of his soul with God ; faithless is 
he who can turn away from these utter- 
ances and continue to live a sordid and 
materialistic life!^ 



*Above, ch. xiv. "The best exposition of these chapters ia in 
George Adam Smith's Book of Isaiah^ Vol. II. 



CHAPTER XLIX. 

NEHEMIAH. 

•* Except Jehovah keep the city, 
The watchman waketh but in vain." 
— Psalm cxxvii, i. 

** Then faint not, falter not, nor plead 
Thy weakness ; truth itself is strong ; 
The Uon's strength, the eagle's speed, 
Are not alone vouchsafed to wrong." 
— Whit Her. 

In the year 444 B. C, almost exactly a 
hundred years after " the great unknown '' 
prophet had begun his ministry in Babylonia, 
we catch a glimpse of Nehemiah, a princely 
young Hebrew at the court of Artaxerxes 
in Susa, who was cup-bearer to the king. 
During the hundred years which had passed 
Cyrus had conquered Babylon, and the Per- 
sian empire had taken the place of the 
Babylonian. Cyrus had reversed the policy 
of the Assyrians and Babylonians, and had 
permitted captive peoples to return to their 
respective countries. This gave the Jews 
the opportunity which the great prophet of 
the exile had foreseen. A few had taken 

223 



224 NEHEMIAH 

advantage of it, had returned to Jerusalem 
and erected an altar on the site of the old 
temple. Twenty years had rolled by, and 
then through the labors of Haggai and 
Zechariah the temple had been rebuilt. But 
seventy years more had rolled away and 
the walls of Jerusalem were still in ruins, 
and its poor, struggling inhabitants were 
plundered by every powerful marauder who 
passed by. 

One day the princely Nehemiah in Susa 
had an opportunity to learn from a passing 
Jew the desolate condition of Jerusalem. 
The sad story so preyed upon his mind that 
the king soon noticed his gloom. Upon 
learning the cause, Artaxerxes appointed 
Nehemiah governor of Jerusalem, and sent 
him thither with full authority to build the 
walls. The story of his arrival at Jerusa- 
lem, of the opposition which he encountered 
from the Jews themselves, of the plots which 
were laid by others to frustrate his work, of 
the energy with which he overcame all 
obstacles, devoting his fortune to the enter- 
prise and persuading others to do the same, is ,^ 
vividly told in the early chapters of the book 



NEHEMIAH 226 

ofNehemiah. It was a herculean task. The 
picture of the courtly Nehemiah, accustomed 
to the soft apparel of the imperial court, 
working like his men armed with trowel 
and bow, the implements of building and 
of defence, sleeping on his arms, and inspir- 
ing a hopeless nation to accomplish the 
impossible in the face of great dangers, 
presents us with a noble example of what 
can be done when one, possessed of the finest 
powers and blessed with the best of oppor- 
tunities, presents all to God in humble 
consecration, and receives back the gift 
touched with the emotion of a heavenly 
inspiration. 

When the outward walls were erected, 
Nehemiah, with the help of Ezra, proceeded 
to erect walls for the protection of the faith. 
Unknown men had taken up the work of 
Ezekiel, and had drawn up what they 
regarded as ideal laws for the regulation of 
the religious life. They were all endeavor- 
ing to shape the religious polity so as to 
realize the ideal for which the Mosaic reli- 
gion stood, and thus regarded the laws 
which they collected as the expression of 



226 NEHEMIAH 

God's will through Moses. By the time of 
Nehemiah these various codes had been 
combined into a Levitical law, nearly re- 
sembling that in our Bibles, and Nehemiah 
and Ezra made a great convocation of the 
people in Jerusalem and induced them to 
bind themselves to observe this law. Within 
a very few years this code was combined 
with the previously known laws to form our 
Pentateuch. 1 This was the second step in 
the canonization of our Bible. Ezra had 
endeavored to accomplish this in vain ; the 
deed waited for Nehemiah's courtly tact and 
consecrated skill. Lovers of the Bible there- 
fore have cause to bless Nehemiah still. 
Who can estimate the uplifting influence 
which the first five books of our Bible have 
had on the jurisprudence and the science of 
the world ? No matter if some of their laws 
are now superseded by better expressions of 
the spirit of Christ; no matter if science 
now is able to present a more exact picture 
of the beginnings; we owe the vantage 
ground, which has made these things possi- 
ble, largely to the preparation of thought to 
which these books helped. 

* One proof of thia is the fact that the Samaritans who finally split 
from the Jews in the time of Nehemiah have the Pentateuch. It 
forms their whole Bible. On the Samaritans, compare Price, the 
Monuments and the Old Testament, ch. xxiv. 



CHAPTER L. 
THE LEVITICAL RITUAL. 

" And according to the law, I may almost say, all 
things are cleansed with blood, and apart from shed- 
ding of blood there is no remission. Hebrews ix, 22. 

" Oh how I love thy law ! 
It is my meditation all the day." 

— Psalm cxix, 97. 

Christian students formerly regarded the 
various features of the Levitical ritual as 
types of the work of Christ. The blood of 
the victims represented to them the blood of 
Christ, as did badger skins dyed red, and 
other crimson elements of the ritual. This 
method of reading Christ into the ritual 
was arbitrary and superficial. That the 
method secured, so far as the sacrifices were 
concerned, a certain degree of truth has 
been pointed out already,^ The blood 
sprinkled on altar and congregation was a 
later application of ritual which most natur- 
ally represented in its original form the 
work which Christ accomplished — the 



Above, Chapter xiii. 



228 THE LEVITICAL EITUAL 

binding of the heart of the believer to God 
in a real community of life. 

By the time that the Epistle to the He- 
brews was written, it appeared to a devout 
Jewish Christian, that, according to this 
law, no sin was forgiven without the shed- 
ding of blood. As a matter of fact the law 
does not provide for sacrifices for all sins. 
A few ceremonial sins, which can hardly be 
regarded as sins except from a superstitious 
point of view,i and a few cases of false deal- 
ing, ^ are the only individual sins for which 
sacrifices are provided. The day of Atone- 
ment ^ was a sacrifice for national, not for 
individual sins, and the goat, on which the 
sins of the people were confessed, was sent 
out alone to propitiate the wilderness demon, 
Azazel. No sacrifices are provided for the 
sins of the inner life. If the ritual is a type 
of Christ's sacrificial work, it is a most im- 
perfect one. 

On the whole the Levitical ritual is a 
type of ritualistic Christianity. Early 
Christianity, like the early religion of Israel, 
knew no elaborate ritual. Just as we can 



^See Ley. It and t. *8ee Lev. vi. 'Lev. xvl. 



THE LEVITICAL RITUAL 229 

first trace the Levitical ritual in Israel's set- 
tled life in the time after the exile, ^ so Chris- 
tians first used an elaborate ritual some cen- 
turies after the departure of the Master. As 
the Levitical ritual contained some supersti- 
tious elements, such as the conception that 
contact with a dead body is sin, and that 
the demon Azazel must be propitiated, so 
ritualistic Christianity has its superstition 
of transubtantiation. Each ritual sought 
by means of outward forms, some of which 
were hoary with antiquity, to kindle the 
imagination of the worshipper, and to uplift 
his heart. The weakness of each system, 
the Jewish and the Christian, lay in the fact 
that it interposed a priesthood between the 
worshipper and his God, making him believe 
that God is far away. The worshipper was 
thus robbed of some of his highest personal 
privileges, and of the conception of the essen- 
tial sacredness and priestly function of every 
good life. 



^ From the days of the Judges to the exile, no trace of the Leviti- 
cal ritual appears in any really historical book, and there is much to 
show that it was not obserred. On the origin and date of the Leviti- 
cal code, see the article " Leviticus" in Hasting's Dictionary of the 
Bible, Carpenter and Harford-Battersby's JIexateuch,Yo[. I, pp. 
121-157, and Driver's Introduction to the Literature of the Old 
Testament, pp, 118-150. 



230 THE LEVITICAL RITUAL 

And yet both in Judaism and in Chris- 
tianity the ritualistic element performed a 
useful function. In those hard and trying 
centuries between the exile and the Chris- 
tian era, it was because the Jew had an ob- 
jective, well organized worship for which to 
strive that he survived to prepare the way 
for the mission of the Son of Man. So in 
those centuries of ignorance and strife, which 
we call the dark ages, it was the definite, 
well organized ritual of the church which 
held men to Christianity. Here was some- 
thing definite to be fought for, or to adhere 
to, or to die for. The ritual was a husk for 
the preservation of the true faith, until its 
kernel should be ready for the harvest. 

It must not be forgotten, too, that there 
are souls who are greatly helped by ritual. 
It uplifts their thought and fills them with 
moral and spiritual enthusiasm. Such were 
many of the later psalmists, who chant the 
praises of the law. If it could create such 
pure religious enthusiasm in such devout 
souls, it must have had some useful religious 
function. We must not, therefore, deny to 
those who still need the external aids of 



THE LEVITICAL RITUAL 231 

incense and solemn pomp the help which 
they find in them. God comes to different 
souls through different avenues. JSTone 
should be satisfied with any form, however, 
but should know that God really visits the 
heart, and finds expression in the life. 

•* Thy litanies, sweet offices 
Of love and gratitude ; 
Thy sacramental liturgies, 
The joy of doing good. 

In vain shall waves of incense drift 

The vaulted nave around, 
In vain the minster turret lift 

Its brazen weights of sound. 

The heart must ring Thy Christmas bells, 

Thy inward altars raise ; 
Its faith and hope thy canticles, 

And its obedience praise I " 



CHAPTER LI. 



JONAH. 



** They repented at the preaching of Jonah ; and 
behold, a greater than Jonah is here." Luke xi, 32. 

** I must go send some better messenger." 

— Shakespeare. 

Israel in the early days had thought of 
Jehovah as the God of that nation only. 
As late as the book of Micah we find the 
gods of the heathen recognized as real 
deities. 1 Even earlier than that, however, 
the best spirits among the Hebrews had 
caught the great truth that one God controls 
all nations, and that He is Jehovah. Amos 
is the first to distinctly express this view. 
Down to the time of the exile even the 
prophets continued, nevertheless, to think 
that God cared chiefly for Israel. They 
represent other nations as existing chiefly 
as appendages to Israel. The exile brought 
to the chosen people a closer acquaintance 
with other nations, and it gradually dawned 
upon the Hebrew mind that God cared for 



»Micah iv, 5. 

232 



JONAH 233 

other nations on their own account and for 
their own worth, and that Israel was chosen, 
not that she might be the exclusive recipient 
of the divine favor, but that she might be a 
missionary among the nations. 

The result of this was the organization of 
an extensive missionary propaganda on the 
part of the Jews, for the prosecution of which 
a considerable missionary literature was 
created.* Naturally there were many of the 
Jews who looked askance at this whole 
movement; in its early stages there were 
many who opposed it. They thought it was 
degrading to the supreme position of the 
chosen people to suppose that anything but 
destruction could await the heathen. As a 
satire against this class, the book of Jonah 
was written. 

The author represented Israel as a prophet, 
because he intended to hold before the nation 
the idea that God would have them carry 
His message to the world. He selected the 
name Jonah, because it meant '* dove " and 
would be eaily understood as an allegorical 

'SeeSchiirer's History of the Jewish People in the time of Jesus 
Christ, Div. II. Vol. II. p. 220 ff, or Thatcher's Apostolic Church, 
ch. ii 



234 JONAH 

allusion to the nation. ^ Babylon was repre- 
sented as a monster which swallowed and 
cast up Jonah, because the book of Jeremiah 
had already made that figure familiar to the 
Hebrews as a picture of the exile and the 
return. 2 So this writer wrote his parable to 
teach, that Israel was carried captive for not 
doing her proper missionary work, and that 
after her escape from captivity she did it 
sullenly and in anything but the right 
spirit. 3 When interpreted from this point 
of view the book becomes a most interesting 
missionary tract. It portrays well what a 
missionary or a missionary people should 
not be, and by contrast sets forth the ideal 
missionary character.* 

It was this feature — the missionary preach- 
ing of Jonah — upon which our Lord seized 
as a sign or type of His own work,^ and we 



^That it was also the name of a prophet, may hare influenced him 
too, see 2 Kings xiv, 25. 

aSee Jeremiah li, 35, 44. 

'No one with literary feeling can read this book in connection 
with Amos and Hosea and not oe convinced that it comes from a 
very different age. It resembles Esther, Judith, and Tobit much 
more closely in style. 

*The fact that Christ refers to it does not prove that it is not an 
allegory. He often, as in the parable of the prodigal son, used im- 
aginative material as parables. 

^Scholars generally recognize that Luke gives Christ's real teach- 
ingin this matter, and that Matthew is mistaken in making it refer 
to His entombment, 



JONAH 235 

therefore have His example for regarding it 
in this light. It presents as the ideal that 
spirit of loving service for all the world 
which was so characteristic of Christ. It 
caught a little of the spirit of that great 
commission : "Go ye therefore and make 
disciples of all the nations," and is a type of 
that Christlike missionary impulse, which 
in the last century has heard the cry for 
release from error coming 

'* From Greenland's icy mountains, 
From India's coral strand, 
Where Africa's sunny fountains 
Roll down their golden sands," 

and has sought to meet the great need in 
the Master's way, — an impulse which must 
go forward until *' the kingdoms of this 
world shall become the kingdoms of our 
Lord and of His Christ." 



CHAPTER LII. 

THE PSALTER. 

** Sing us one of the songs of Zion." Psalm cxxxvii, 3. 

"And so the shadows fall apart, 
And so the west- winds play ; 
And all the windows of my heart 
I open to the day." 

— Whittier. 

The Psalter was the hymn-book of the 
second temple. While it contains here and 
there psalms which were composed in the 
days before the exile, those psalms were 
selected because they expressed the hopes 
and fears, the aspirations and the faith of 
the post-exilic days. Compilers of hymn- 
books always allow themselves some editor- 
ial liberty. For example, Whittier wrote 
for election day, 1842, a poem entitled " De- 
mocracy/^ beginning : 

•' Bearer of Freedom's holy hght, 
Breaker of Slavery s' chain and rod." 

If I remember rightly, it was Samuel Long- 
fellow who introduced extracts from it into a 
hymnal under the title '' Christianity," and 

236 



THE PSALTER 237 

with various editorial changes it has since 
found its way under this title into many 
hymn-books. Probably the editors of the 
psalter allowed themselves similar editorial 
liberties, but they secured a work which 
is capable of expressing the religious emo- 
tions of the world, because it so faithfully 
expressed their own. 

Readers of the Revised Version will have 
noticed that the psalter is divided into five 
books. These books were collected and edited 
at different times as the Moody and Sankey 
hymns have been within the memory of 
many now living. The first of these collec- 
tions seems to have been made in the time of 
Ezra and Nehemiah and was named after 
king David. The second and third were com- 
posed by putting together and rearranging 
three previously existing hymn-books, which 
were entitled ''The Prayers of David," ''The 
Psalms of Asaph," and " The Psalms of the 
Sons of Korah," and were completed by the 
end of the Persian period, about 330 B. C. 
The fourth and fifth books were completed 
by about 130 B. C, and include some Psalms 



238 THE PSALTER 

from the Maccabaean time.* The last two 
books have incorporated in them previously 
existing smaller hymn-books. Thus "The 
Songs of Ascent," — Psa. cxx-cxxxiv, — is a 
little collection of songs concerning the 
return from Babylon. 

While modern study of the psalms has 
made it clear that we can trace few of them 
back to David in their present form, it has 
also made it very clear that the rich relig- 
ious life of the ancient Jews produced many 
more inspired psalm-writers than we had 
supposed. God still speaks to us in these 
stirring lyrics. Through them He teaches 
us how to speak to Him. We know them 
to be inspired, not because we can connect 
them with the pen of this or that heroic 
figure, but because they still bring inspiring 
messages to our spirits. 

The psalter is a type of the varied relig- 
ious life of modern Christendom, just as it is 



* On the composition of the Psalter, see an article by the writer in 
The American Journal of Theology, Vol. iii, pp. 740-746, and W. 
Robertson Smith's Old Testament in the Jewish Church, 2^^. 
N, Y,, Appleton's 1892, ch. vii. The titles of the Psalms were added 
by editors, and in most cases were hasty guesses, which are often 
inconsistent with the contents of the Psalm. Thus, Ps. li, is ascribed 
to David by the title, while v. 18 shows it to come from the exile. The 
real value of the titles lies in the fact that they give us the history of 
the compilatioa of the psalter. 



THE PSALTER 239 

a mirror of the religious life of these centu- 
ries of post-exilic Judaism. Here and there 
human passion speaks plainly and without 
disguise, as in " Happy shall he be, who 
taketh and dasheth thy little ones against 
the rock/' giving us a pure cry for unsanc- 
tified revenge. We cannot, however, judge 
the author too harshly, for, though the sen- 
timent is certainly unchristian, it has often 
found historic expression among those who 
have professed Christianity, and frequently 
flames up unbidden in the breast of many a 
Christian still. The same must be said of 
other imprecatory psalms ; they are imper- 
fect, but they are still types of our imperfect 
Christianity. 

On the other hand the psalter is the mir- 
ror of a religious faith, a sensitiveness to sin, 
a yearning after God, and a joy in forgive- 
ness, which the best spiritual life of Christ- 
endom as yet scarcely equals, and this 
Jewish expression of which we are often 
glad to make our own. In our hours of 
doubt we still find courage in the self-exhor- 
tation : 

« Pb. cxxxvii, 9. 



240 THE PSALTER 

'• Why art thou cast down, my soul ? 
Why art thou disquieted within me ? 
Hope thou in God : for I shall yet praise Him." 

In our hours of faith no words express 
our serene confidence so well as : 

'• The Lord is my Shepherd, 
I shall not want. ' ' 

When conscious of inward guilt no prayer, 
unless it be that of the publican, springs 
more spontaneously to our lips than the 
psalmist's cry : 

' • Create in me a clean heart, God 
And renew a right spirit within me." 

And when the happiness of forgiveness 
breaks upon the soul one loves to sing with 
another psalmist : 

" Oh, the happiness of him whose transgression is 
forgiven, 
Whose sin is pardoned ! " ^ 

And as one closes his eyes on life, no more 
sublime expression of that faith which con- 
quers the grave can come to his lips than : 

"Yea, though I walk through the valley of death- 
shade, 
I will fear no evil ; for thou art with me." 

To live up to these highest expressions of 
the old Jewish hymn-book is to be a pure 
Christian. 



According to the Hebrew. 



CHAPTER LIII. 

SATAN. 

" I beheld Satan fallen as lightning from heaven." 

Luke X, 18. 

"Him the almighty Power 
Hurl'd headlong flaming from th' ethereal sky, 
With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
To bottomless perdition, there to dwell 
In adamantine chains and penal fire, 
Who durst defy th' Omnipotent to arms." 

— Milton, 

The problem of evil is one which has at- 
tracted the thought of saints and sages in all 
ages, and has received many different 
answers. We are so accustomed to think of 
Satan as the originator of evil, that the fact 
that a considerable course of the Biblical 
narrative had passed before the figure of 
Satan appears in it, does not strike many a 
reader of the Bible at all. We are accus- 
tomed to identify the serpent of Genesis with 
Satan, but the Hebrews of the Old Testa- 
ment period did not do so. To them the 
serpent was merely an unusually acute 

241 



242 SATAN 

animal. 1 This serpent was first identified 
with Satan in the apocryphal book, " The 
Wisdom of Solomon," which was written 
in the first century ,^B. C. 

The earlier Hebrew thought had no need 
for Satan. The sovereignty of God was so 
absolutely accepted that He was believed to 
be the author of both good and evil. Thus 
King Saul was thought to be troubled by an 
evil spirit from Jehovah ;3 Jehovah was 
thought to have tempted David to sin ;* 
Jehovah sent, it is said, a lying spirit to 
tempt Ahab to his death ; ^ Amos exclaimed : 
" Shall evil befall a city and Jehovah hath 
not done it ?" ^ while the great prophet of 
the exile pictured Jehovah as saying to Him- 
self : '* I make peace, and create evil.'"^ 

It was not until about the time of the 
exile that it began to become inconsistent 
with the Hebrew thought of God, to think 
of Him as the author of evil. It is then 
that the figure of Satan begins to appear in 
the Biblical books. It is first found in the 
book of Job.^ Satan is there represented as 

^See the writer's Semitic Origins, pp. 93, 96. =»Ch, ii, 23, 24. 
nSam. xvi,14. *2 Sam. xxiv, 1. »1 Kings, xxii, 20-23. 'Amos, lii, 6. 
asa. xlT, 7. 82 Chs. i, ii. 



SATAN 243 

still an angel in the heavenly court, but he 
is a dissatisfied, an unhappy, a disgruntled 
angel. He doubts human virtue ; he be- 
lieves that every man has his price ; and 
receives permission to worry Job. In the 
book of Zechariah Satan appears as the op- 
ponent of Joshua, the high priest ; and in 
the narrative of David's census, where 
Samuel says that Jehovah incited David to 
number the people, Chronicles says it was 
Satan. 1 No other mention of him occurs in 
the Old Testament. 2 

In the book of Enoch evil is thought 
to have been introduced into the world by 
the angels, who, in the sixth of Genesis, are 
said to have come to earth and married 
human wives. ^ It is one of these, Gadreel 
by name, who was thought to have tempted 
Eve.* The Wisdom of Solomon, as we have 
noted, represents Satan as the tempter in 
Eden, and this view seems to have prevailed 
among the writers of the New Testament. 
The view of Enoch, that the tempter was a 
fallen angel, has been widely accepted in 



^1 Chron. xxi, 1. ^In Ps. cix, 6, the word refers to a human adver- 
sary. 'See Enoch vi-xi. ♦Enoch Ixix, 9. 



244 SATAN 

Christian theology, and has received im- 
mortal expression in the great poem of 
Milton. 

At the time of Christ it was generally be- 
lieved that Satan was the author of evil in 
the world, and just as Christ spoke the 
language of the people in referring to the 
insane as possessed of demons, so He used 
their language in speaking of Satan. 

The belief in one, or in many, evil spirits, 
does not, however, solve the problem of evil, 
or relieve God of responsibility for it. Un- 
less one believes with the Persians, and with 
the early Christian Gnostics, that Satan is a 
second God, and is independent of God, it 
must be recognized that he exercises his 
baneful activity by divine permission. No 
one can be a Biblical Christian and not re- 
cognize God as the one supreme, all-powerful 
Being. Pie must permit evil in the world, 
because He sees that somehow greater good 
will in the end result from the conditions 
which make evil possible. He has disclosed 
to us His heart of love in Christ. Though 
we may not be able to understand His ways 
in this matter, we can trust Him, can believe 



SATAN 245 

that He is wise, can seek to get the best out 
of the conditions in which He has placed 
us, and can thus become possessed through 
Christ of a positive character, godlike in its 
quality. 

The words of the Master, quoted at the 
beginning of this chapter, hold before us the 
Savior's promise that evil will be overcome. 
God, not Satan, is supreme ; goodness, not 
sin, is to prevail ; truth, not falsehood, is 
eternal. '' Fight," then, " the good fight of 
faith. '^ *' He that overcometh, I will give 
to him to sit down with Me in My throne." 



CHAPTER LIV. 
INTERNATIONAL PEACE.* 

"Love your enemies." Matt, v, 44. 

*' Peace, thy olive wand extend, 
And bid wild war his ravage end, 
Man with his brother man to meet, 
And as a brother kindly greet." 

— Burns. 

In the actual world warfare and struggle 
seem to be perfectly natural. Biologists 
teach us that it is by means of these that 
animal life has been' pushed forward to its 
present degree of perfection. Man is from 
one standpoint a member of the animal 
kingdom. In the earlier stages of his de- 
velopment he has necessarily been pushed 
forward by the same processes which have 
moulded all animal life. He cannot be led 
forward by the lofty ideals which inspire by 
their brightness and purity until he can 
appreciate something of their beauty and 
sublimity. Until then, like his fellows 
in the animal realm, he must be pushed 

* Part of a paper read at the Friends' Peace Conference in Phila- 
delphia in 1901, and afterward published in the Friends' Intelli- 
gencer and the Biblical fVorld. 

246 



INTERNATIONAL PEACE 247 

forward by the blind forces of struggle and 
survival. To discover the elements of a 
peace doctrine in the Old Testament, we 
must discover the power to appreciate the 
great religious truths on which it rests. 
Those truths are the Fatherhood of God, and 
the brotherhood of man. Until men have 
clearly understood that God is the God of 
all men, and that it is as wrong to injure a 
stranger as a brother, because both are the 
children of the same Father, no peace doc- 
trine is possible to men. 

Now, in the early days of Israel's national 
life the necessary religious foundation for 
this truth had not been laid. Each tribe, 
or, at the most, each nation, had its god. 
Each nation thought it must worship its 
own god, hub it in no wise denied the reality 
of the gods of other nations. These gods 
were thought of as larger men, ready to fight 
with one another, or to overreach one an- 
other in all the ways which men would do. 
This applies to the early history of Israel as 
truly as to that of other ancient peoples. 
When David was temporarily driven from 
his native land and had to take refuge in 



248 INTERNATIONAL PEACE 

Moab, we hear him complaining : '■^ They 
have driven me out this day that I should 
not cleave unto the inheritance of Jehovah, 
saying, Go serve other gods,'' (1 Sam. xxvi, 
19). Jehovah's power was, he seemed to 
think, limited to Palestine, and, when on 
foreign soil, he naturally supposed he must 
worship a foreign god. This accounts for 
the fact that David practiced such barbari- 
ties upon conquered enemies (2 Sam. xii, 
31). From his religious point of view 
these enemies had no rights. Obviously 
in such an age the peace doctrine could 
find no root. 

In Amos, the first of the literary prophets, 
we find a broader outlook, both as regards 
the extent of God's rule over the nations, 
and as regards the barbarities of war. He 
perceived that Jehovah controlled all na- 
tions ; Jehovah brought the Philistines from 
Caphtor and the Aramaeans from Kir, as 
well as Israel from Egypt, (Amos ix, 7). It 
is Amos, too, the possessor of this breadth of 
religious vision, who condemned that viola- 
tion of treaties, that barbarity to women, and 
that disregard of the sacredness of death, 



INTEENATIONAL PEACE 249 

which are so characteristic of war, (see Amos 
i, 9; i, 13; ii. 1). 

It takes in any age a long time for a 
higher ideal to win its way, and that was 
true of Israel as well as of others. Isaiah 
sang of the birth of the " Prince of peace/' 
but in a language which is much obscured 
in our common versions of the Bible, and 
which is so enshrined in the affections of 
the Christian world; that one hesitates to 
disturb it even in the interest of the truth. 
When Isaiah's language is really under- 
stood, however, it differs but little from the 
hard standards of the age of war. That 
Prince, as Isaiah conceived him, was to be 
a " Wonderful plotter, a very god of a war- 
rior, and a father of booty," before he was 
" prince of peace." In other words, Isaiah's 
conception is still the conception of a con- 
queror ; the peace which this passage pic- 
tured was such as Kitchener is making in 
South Africa. 

At another time Isaiah had a more attrac- 
tive vision. In the eleventh chapter of his 
prophecy, when describing the Messianic 
kingdom, he sang of a time when 



250 INTERNATIONAL PEACE 

"The wolf will lodge with the lamb, 
The leopard lie down with the kid, 
The calf and the young lion graze together, 
And a little child will lead them." 

This language is no doubt figurative. The 
prophet pictured under these animal forms 
the way in which human passion was to 
become harmless. It is not clear, how- 
ever, whether his thought embraced the 
world in this Utopia of peace, or whether he 
confined it to the kingom of Israel. The 
words which immediately follow favor the 
latter view. 

Such religious conceptions as those of 
Amos were, nevertheless, bound to bear 
fruit. Under the influence of the prophets 
the old laws were recast and king Josiah 
instituted a reform on their basis. We now 
possess this work in our book of Deuter- 
onomy. It is characterized by a large 
humanitarian element. ^ It sought to soften 
the rugged features of the hard life of ancient 
times. It instituted laws in behalf of the 
poor, in behalf of slaves, who were usually 
the captives taken in war, and even in 

1 See Kent's " Humanitarian element in the Old Testament legis- 
lation " in Biblical World, for Oct., 1901. 



INTERNATIONAL PEACE 251 

behalf of animals. In its treatment of war 
itself there is a milder, more human and 
reasonable note than one is accustomed to 
find in antiquity.^ Of the Levitical code 
which came into its present form even later, 
though many of its laws are old, the same 
may also be said." If it seems to limit the 
sympathies of Israel at times by enforcing 
kindness towards members of that race par- 
ticularly, it also commands the Hebrew to 
love the resident alien as himself, (Lev. xix, 
17, 18). When we remember that the resi- 
dent alien was usually a captive of war, we 
can see how beneficently the teaching of 
prophets like Amos was taking effect. The 
idea that there was but one God and He the 
God of all men, was producing a new con- 
ception of humanity fatal to the spirit of war. 
In no book of the Old Testament does 
this leavening doctrine, that God cares for 
all men, and its corollary, that mercy is due 
to all, shine out more clearly than in the 
book of Jonah, but we have been so occu- 
pied in quarreling about Jonah's whale that 



* See Deut. xx, aud cf. Goldwiii Smith in Independent of Aug. 22, 
1901, p. 1959 ff. =* See Kent in Biblical IVorld, Nov., 1901. 



252 INTERNATIONAL PEACE 

the significance of the message of the book 
has escaped us. The book was written to 
enforce the great truths that God's care ex- 
tends to all men, that He chose Israel not 
for her own sake merely, but to bear His 
message of warning, of righteousness, and of 
mercy to the world, and that even the worst 
of Israel's enemies who become His people 
may find mercy with God. The kindli- 
ness of God extends to all nations ; the 
spirit of helpful sympathy should prevail 
toward them in the hearts of His worship- 
perS;— this is the message of this unique 
book, and it is a message calculated to extir- 
pate the spirit of selfishness and narrow- 
ness from which all war springs. 

The climax of Old Testament thought in 
this respect is reached in that little prophecy^ 
found both in the second chapter of Isaiah 
and in the fourth chapter of Micah, the 
origin of which is a puzzle. Was it com- 
posed by Isaiah, by Micah, or by some 
unknown prophet? Perhaps the latter is 
the correct view, and from this unknown 
seer it may have been introduced by editors 
into the positions in the books of Isaiah and 



INTERNATIONAL PEACE 253 

Micah, where it now stands. Be that as it 
may, in its inspired utterance we have for 
the first time an adequate expression of 
what a real monotheism means for the 
world. " The mountain of the Lord's house 
shall be established on the top of the moun- 
tains and exalted above the hills." " Many- 
nations shall give Him their allegiance ; 
His word shall rule them; He shall judge 
between many peoples and decide concern- 
ing strong nations afar off : and they shall 
beat their swords into plow-shares, and their 
spears into pruning hooks ; nation shall not 
lift up sword against nation, neither shall 
they learn war any more." One God for 
all nations, hence one brotherhood among 
men, and a universal peace on earth. This 
is the only logical view for a monotheist, 
and is the inevitable result of a belief in one 
God. Such is the strength of old custom, 
especially of custom consecrated by religious 
sanction and rooted in human passion, that 
this prophetic vision did not make a deep 
impression on the prophet's contemporaries, 
but nevertheless the beautiful picture of 
international amity, clearly drawn against 



254 INTERNATIONAL PEACE 

the dark background of a savage antiquity, 
anticipated by two millenniums the vision 
of our modern poet, who sang : 

*' Evil shall cease and Violence pass away, 
And the tired world breathe free through a long 
Sabbath day." 

Viewed in the manner here indicated, 
the Old Testament affords a basis for the 
peace doctrine, both because it exhibits the 
fact that war springs from the animal side 
of human nature, and is fostered only by a 
conception of God so limited as to be but 
little removed from heathenism ; and be- 
cause it reveals the fact that the doctrine of 
monotheism cannot be really held without 
creating in mens' minds an abhorrence of the 
barbarities of war, and inspiring visions of 
a universal peace. The former element, 
though painfully apparent, is a waning or 
diminishing element; the latter, as revela- 
tion in its progress nears the Central Figure 
in human history, clearly appears as the 
increasing and triumphant element, prepar- 
ing the way for the teaching of Him who 
not only prohibited killing, but even the 
hatred of a brother, and who enjoined upon 
His followers the love of enemies. 



CHAPTER LV. 

THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM. 

"Thy kingdom come." Matt, vi, 10. 

" Come, in this accepted horn* ; 

Bring Thy heavenly kingdom in ; 
Fill us with Thy glorious power, 
Rooting out the seeds of sin," 

— Charles Wesley. 

The remark of the Apostle Paul, that 
'' That is not first which is spiritual, but 
that Avhich is natural; then that which is 
spiritual/' is aptly illustrated by the unfold- 
ing of many phases of spiritual life and 
thought, but by none more aptly than by 
the conceptions concerning the coming of the 
kingdom of God. In prophets, like Hosea 
and Isaiah, an expectation is expressed that 
a Messianic kingdom, glorious as that of 
David, and in which perfect justice shall 
abound, will come. The kingdom, which 
they expected is clearly an external, earthly 
monarchy. This ideal continued for some 
centuries to be the hope of the pious Israel, 
ites. The faithful of these generations were 
content to endure hardships themselves, if 

255 



256 THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM 

only their descendants could enjoy the bless- 
ings of the kingdom of God. 

As the centuries dragged themselves along, 
however, and the realization of the hope 
was deferred, it gradually came about that 
the hearts of the faithful were not satisfied 
that they themselves should suffer, while all 
the felicity was to be reaped by generations 
yet unborn. By this time the doctrine of 
immortality had grown up among the 
Hebrews, and this came to the aid of these 
devout souls. They might die before the 
coming of the kingdom, but they would be 
raised to share in its blessings.^ 

During these centuries another influence 
had also been at work. Hebrews had 
learned from Babylonians the art of pictur- 
ing their history in the terms of the conflict 
of Bel and the dragon, — that conflict by 
which the Babylonians believed the creation 
of the world had been made possible. ^ Under 
the influence of this method of conceiving 



^This hope is expressed in Dan. xii, 2, 3. "The writer has outlined 
this in more detail in the New ^or/cf, March, 1899, p. 120 ff., the 
American Journal of Theology Vol. H, p. 782 ff., and ih.Q Journal 
of Biblical Literature ^ Vol. xvii, p. 80 ff. See also the articles 
"Apocalyptic Literature" in '&»sX'a^^^ Dictionary of the Bible 
ana tht Encyc. Biblica , 



THE COMING OE THE KINGDOM 257 

history, the coming of the Messianic king- 
dom gradually assumed for the Jew the 
aspect of a supernatural conflict. God took 
the place of BeV in the allegory, and the 
evil world which was united against the 
Hebrews, the place of the dragon which was 
to be conquered. One of the earliest repre- 
sentations of this is in the seventh chapter 
of Daniel, where the kingdom is pictured as 
coming supernaturally in the clouds. An- 
other is in the second of Daniel, where it is 
represented as a stone cut out of the moun- 
tain without hands. When once this super- 
natural conception had taken hold of the 
imagination, the marvellous elements in it 
were gradually heightened, as they are in 
the book of Enoch^ and the Psalter of Solo- 
mon.^ The central thought was still the 
hope of earthly empire, but that empire was 
to be introduced by such a supernatural 
cataclysm that none of Israel's enemies could 
escape slaughter. 

When Christ began to teach, this was the 
prevalent Messianic conception. The atti- 
tude which He took towards it, has already 

*Al30 called Marduk and Merodacb. ^See Enoch, chs. xlvi-liv. 
sEspecially Psalter of Solomon xvii. 



258 THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM 

been described.^ He was to be King of the 
truth ; His kingdom, a spiritual kingdom. 
In speaking of it to His disciples He used 
some of the old terms, but in doing so He 
gave them a new meaning. That meaning 
the disciples did not understand; they 
understood His wordS;, which were really 
freighted with a spiritual meaning, to refer to 
the external kingdom, of which their ances- 
tors had been accustomed to think. Al- 
though He declared : " The kingdom of God 
is within you/'^ they repeated His utter- 
ances as though they referred to an external 
empire, and, in the opinion of many modern 
scholars, confused some of them with a Jew- 
ish apocalypse.^ When He ascended they, 
therefore, thought that He had simply been 
taken up for a time, and that He would 
afterward return to earth again to destroy 
the enemies of Israel, and to establish this 
earthly empire. Indeed, one of the Jewish 
traditions concerning their Messiah was that 
He should be born on the earth and caught 



^Abore ch, viii. *Luke xvii, 21. ^The passages in question are 
parts of Matt, xxiv, Mark xiii, and Luke xxi. See Charles, Escha- 
tology, Hebrew, Jewish and Christian, p. 323 ff., and Brigga, 
Messiah of the Gospels, ch. iv. 



THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM 259 

up to heaven for a time, until the hour for 
His revelation should come. Their Jewish 
training had accordingly prepared the dis- 
ciples to hold just the view of the second 
coming of Christ, which we find reflected in 
parts of the New Testament. 

Paul, who had been trained as a Jewish 
rabbi, when he wrote the epistles to the 
Thessalonians still held this Jewish view. 
Jesus had been taken up for a time, he 
taught, but would return soon to establish 
this kingdom. Paul's conception differed 
from the current Jewish conception only in 
the fact that he held Jesus to be the Mes- 
siah, while they did not. 

Riper experience in the Christian life, 
however, led Paul to abandon this view. In 
2 Corinthians, the conception that the dead 
sleep in the underworld until the second 
coming of Christ, which he entertained at 
the time he wrote to the Thessalonians,^ was 
abandoned.^ When he wrote to the Ro- 
mans a little later, he had apparently given 
up the conception of an external kingdom, 



1 See 1 Thes. iv, 13-18. « See 2 Cor. v, 6-8. Compare New World, 
March, 1899, p. 123. 



260 THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM 

and declared : " The kingdom of God is not 
eating and drinking, but righteousness and 
peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." i This 
faith continued to abide with Paul. 2 It was 
thus a Christian experience of years in 
length, which finally convinced him of the 
spiritual nature of the kingdom of God, and 
of the spiritual nature of its coming. 

The Gospel of John reports discourses of 
Christ in which He Himself teaches the 
spiritual nature of His coming. There is in 
this Gospel no picture of a violent coming 
to destroy enemies, in a way which it 
would be sinful for men to imitate, but the 
Master several times equates His return to 
them with the coming of the Holy Spirit. 
He passes back and forth in His language 
from Himself to the Holy Spirit in such a 
way as to make it clear that His return to 
comfort them — the return which the world 
is not to behold, but which will make Him 
manifest to the disciples — is His return in 
the Holy Spirit.^ In Paul, then, and in the 
Gospel of John, we reach at last Christians 
who are capable of grasping the Master's 

» Eom. xiv, 17. « Philippines i, 23. ^ John xiv, 16-18, and xvi,7-21 



THE COMING OF THE KINGDOM 261 

thought upon this point. The Jewish husk 
they have shaken off; the spiritual flower 
is revealed. 

This, therefore, is the great truth con- 
cerning the coming of the kingdom ; Christ 
will make the kingdoms of the earth His 
just as rapidly as men will let Him make 
their hearts His. Every heart purified and 
vitalized by Christ, is a step taken in advance 
in the coming of the kingdom. When we 
pray : " Thy kingdom come," our prayer is 
a mockery unless we are really willing that 
the divine Spirit shall come and rule our 
hearts. The prayer : '' Thy will be done," 
is vain unless we are willing to do the will 
of God, which enjoins eternal right and jus- 
tice toward all. When men have been won 
to Christ, so that the world is filled with 
brave, pure, tender, Christlike hearts, the 
kingdom of God will have come. Social 
injustice will then disappear. Violence will 
pass away. *' The wolf and the lamb will 
lie down together." 

" Amen : come, Lord Jesus I " 



CHAPTER LVI 

THE CITY OF GOD. 

" He looked for the city which hath foundations, 
whose builder and maker is God." Hebrews xi, 10. 

" O sweet and blessed country, 
The home of God's elect ! 
O sweet and blessed country, 
That eager hearts expect ! " 

Tr./. M. Neave, 

As the early Semites wandered across the 
Arabian desert, where a scorching sun 
parched the sandy wastes, and approached 
an oasis, they felt that they were approach- 
ing a place where a god had his dwelling. 
In a land so arid they believed that only 
supernatural power could produce such 
verdure, such refreshing shade, and such 
fruitage. From these Semites the Hebrews 
were descended, and the oasis of more prim- 
itive times became their Eden, or garden of 
God.^ From that Eden man had been ex- 
pelled by his disobedience to God. 

As the hope of an immortal life and of a 
kingdom of God grew in Israelitish hearts, 

* See the writer's Semitic Origins, pp. 93-96. 
262 



THE CITY OF GOD 263 

they often tried to picture to themselves the 
land where that hope was to be realized. It 
was then very natural that the thoughts of 
men should return to the garden of God, 
from which man had fallen. It was not, 
they came to think, a thing of the past alto- 
gether, but might be attained by the right- 
eous in the future too. " They shall not 
hunger nor thirst ; neither shall the heat 
nor the sun smite them : for He that hath 
mercy on them will lead them, by springs 
of water will He guide them,^' i sang the 
great prophet of the exile. He had in mind 
the striking contrast presented by a shady, 
fertile oasis with the burning desert. So also 
in the book of Enoch, when it was thought 
that the good would be raised for a future 
life of five hundred years, ^ their home was 
pictured as a garden containing a palm 
tree.^ 

In the days after the Babylonian exile 
another conception of the heavenly abode 
arose. The love of the pious Jews had cen- 
tred so long upon Jerusalem, that they 



^ Isaiah xlix, 10. -Ethiopic Enoch x, 10 ^ Ethiopic Enoch 
xxiv, XXV. 



264 THE CITY OF GOD 

conceived of the abode of the blest as a new 
Jerusalem more splendid and beautiful than 
the old, but patterned upon it. This is the 
view expressed in the psalms of the Phari- 
sees, called the ^'Psalter of Solomon." ^ In 
the new Testament book of Revelation, to 
which we instinctively turn for impressive 
imagery of heaven, both views are combined. 
In one passage the picture of the trans- 
figured oasis is borrowed from the book of 
Isaiah and is still further transfigured. 
Neither sun nor heat is to smite the saved, 
but the lamb is to guide them to living 
waters, and God is to wipe away all tears 
from their eyes.^ In another passage the 
New Jerusalem is pictured. It is a city, each 
gate of which is a splendid Jewel. ^ A little 
further on we are told that the garden is in 
the midst of the city, for it contains the old 
tree of life, which yields its fruit every 
month.* Eden and Jerusalem are here 
blended into one picture. The two best 
abodes the Jews ever imagined are united 
and glorified to express the unutterable. 



1 Psalter of Solomon xrii. = Rev.vii, 15, 16. » Rev. xxi. * Rev 
xxii, 1, 2. 



THE CITY OF GOD 265 

All these conceptions are the foreshadow- 
ings of spiritual facts. The city of God is 
really in the character of His children. Eden 
is in the heart. It is not so much the place 
to which we go in the future, as the char- 
acter we carry with us which determines 
our happiness. God no doubt has a proper 
abode for His departed saints, but we can 
form little conception of it from the barbaric 
splendor of oriental symbolism. 

" The mind is in its own place, and in itself 
Can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." 

The spiritual significance of this symbol- 
ism is this : God will give His faithful chil- 
dren a life in which the burning heat of pas- 
sion shall not whither the life on the arid sands 
of sin, but in which the heart shall be re- 
freshed by the living spirit of the Master, 
and shall make its own Eden within it and 
about it. The soul, trusting in the Savior, 
and becoming like Him, makes a new Jeru- 
salem in itself ; its virtues crystalize into 
the jewelled foundations of the heavenly 
gates of the personality. The powers of the 
life become adequate to the demands of the 
life J the souFs beauty and peace are abiding. 



266 THE CITY OF GOD 

Thus the Christian Eden and the New 
Jerusalem may begin in this world, though 
their full fruition will be reached in that 
great beyond, where we shall ^' know even 
as we are known." 



CHAPTER LVII. 

HOW CHRIST FULFILLED THE LAW 
AND THE PROPHETS. 

" I came not to destroy, but to fulfill." Matt, v, 17. 

" I know not what the future hath 
Of marvel or surprise, 
Assured alone that life and death 
His mercy underlies." 

— Whittier. 

The united yearning of the Hebrew people 
centred in the expectation of a great De- 
liverer, who should establish the kingdom 
of God. Prophets caught glimpses of the 
great ideal, and each spoke of it in the best 
terms in which it could be conceived in his 
age. The various codes of the law were 
designed, each in its day, to help on the 
coming of the glad time. Sages strained 
their mental vision into the future, and laid 
down precepts for that wise life, which 
would bring in the kingdom. Psalmists, as 
their imaginations were kindled with the 
attractive ideal, sang of it. 

As the centuries passed, and the time of 
the birth of Christ approached, the whole 

267 



268 FULFILLED THE LAW 

energy of the religious minds of Israel con- 
centrated itself upon this one longing. No 
doubt there was much in the Jewish thought 
of the Messiah which was imperfect and 
unworthy, but on the whole it is an inspir- 
ing spectacle to which the literature of these 
centuries introduces us. It is a great thing 
that the whole genius of a nation should 
have devoted itself through hundreds of 
years to such an ideal. 

The history of the Messianic hope in 
Israel is like the history of a plant. It had 
one appearance when it first sprang up as a 
tiny shoot, quite another when its branches 
were well spread to the air of heaven, and 
when finally its fiower came the gentle 
beauty of the petals, and the heavenly per- 
fume which they exhaled, surpassed any- 
thing which the stalk and the leaves had 
seemed to promise. The Jewish plant ex- 
hibited the thorny leaves of an earthly 
kingdom ; Christ unfolded the beautiful 
petals of a kingdom of the spirit. He came, 
not to perform certain ceremonies, and thus 
fulfill the law, but to help men to the real- 
ization of that for which the law stood. 



FULFILLED THE LAW 269 

The law sought to secure a righteous life by 
external rules ; He made a righteous life 
possible for the renewed spirit. Prophets 
dreamed of an empire which should rule 
provinces ; He established a kingdom which 
controls passion. He did not destroy the 
law, but fulfilled it. For just as the flower 
fulfills the purpose of the bud, His teaching 
fulfilled the old Jewish hopes. The bud 
passes aw^ay as the flower comes, but it is not 
destroyed, because it has fulfilled its destiny. 

If, then, we cannot select here and there a 
detached verse in the Old Testament, as our 
fathers and mothers used to do, and say : 
''This was spoken directly of Christ,'^ we 
may find in the whole course of Hebrew 
history, with its lines of thought converg- 
ing towards the Messiah, and its highest 
hopes centering with increasing intensity in 
the Messianic kingdom, a far stronger 
prophecy of the Christ than a few detached 
texts would be. The nation itself was a 
prophet ; its yearnings were a divine oracle. 

The fulfilment, too, is most instructive. 
It illustrates the way God leads His people 
on from goal to goal and height to height 



270 FULFILLED THE LAW 

in the ascent of life. The boy has his 
childish ideas of the manhood he longs to 
reach, but when he becomes a man the 
things which possessed such charm for him 
interest him no more. New interests dawn 
upon his mind, — interests which before he 
could not appreciate, and childish things are 
put away. Thus God ever leads us on. The 
realization of old ideals is approached, only 
that a new and higher ideal may be pre- 
sented to the soul. A theology is crystal- 
ized and does its work, only that it may 
give place to another, newer and better. 
The reform which seemed to promise the 
millennium is accomplished, only to reveal 
the fact that it has made ten other reforms 
necessary. 

*' I know not what the future hath 
Of marvel and surprise." 

In spiritual things, too, the standard is 
under the leadership of Christ ever moving 
forward. He leads on from experience to 
experience. *' It doth not yet appear what 
we shall be," but, " we shall be like Him." 
The whole course of revelation points to the 
fact that heaven itself will not be a life of 



FULFILLED THE LAW 271 

stagnation, but an ever delightful advance 
in the knowledge and the experience of 
spiritual things. Its delight and its joy 
will be that the soul shall live in the pres- 
ence and in the power of Him who con- 
tinually makes all things new. The full 
meaning of that life, the quality of its 
felicity, and the height of its love " eye 
hath not seen nor ear heard.'' 



MAY 1 - 1902 



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